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Chapter Text

Anya Musume’s house wasn’t much by the standards of television families or the well-trimmed homes closer to town, but compared to most of their neighbors, it was a kingdom of its own. A four-bedroom house built decades before she was born, its bones sturdy but weathered, the paint long since sun-bleached into a soft grayish cream. The kitchen was the heart of it, where her grandmother kept cast-iron pans seasoned dark as coffee, and her mother’s rice cooker hissed and clicked from the countertop. They had a roof that didn’t leak, a front porch with a crooked swing, and windows that framed the slow movement of the swamp beyond.

The Musume home stood a few miles from the nearest paved road, surrounded by live oaks that dripped in moss like curtains too heavy to pull back. Her grandfather had built the house by hand after years of saving, hammering nails with calloused fingers that had once picked pineapples in the hot fields of Hawaii. When he was younger, he’d told Anya, he could still smell the sugarcane on his skin long after leaving the island, though he never spoke much of it. His silence carried the weight of the internment camps. The shame, the fear, the quiet decision to disappear into the Deep South and never be seen again.

Anya grew up in that house as if it were a living thing, with its own heartbeat hidden in the creak of the floorboards. She was the youngest of three, but the only one who stayed close to the grandparents’ stories. The others wanted to leave, to find city lights and clean sidewalks, but Anya stayed near the garden, where her grandmother had set up a tiny wooden shrine. It wasn’t much, a repurposed birdhouse painted red and white, with little paper charms that fluttered when the wind came off the swamp. Her grandmother called it a hokora, a miniature shrine for small spirits. She told Anya that every home should have one, a place to whisper thanks to the old gods who still listened, even in strange lands.

Anya took it seriously. She appointed herself the shrine maiden of their yard, sweeping the space with a handmade broom, leaving offerings of rice and flowers stolen from the neighbor’s fence. When thunderstorms rolled in, she’d sit cross-legged by the window and whisper to the spirits to keep their home safe. The thunder always seemed to rumble in reply.

At school, things were different. The other kids didn’t understand her lunches, the small containers of rice, pickled plums, and leftover curry her mother packed for her. They’d wrinkle their noses and say, “It smells weird.” One boy asked if she was eating worms. Anya’s face burned hot, her throat tight, but she didn’t throw anything away. She ate quietly, holding her chopsticks like a shield. When she got home that day, she cried into her grandmother’s apron, words spilling out between hiccups. Her grandmother listened, her hands gentle on Anya’s hair.

“They don’t know any better,” her grandmother said finally. “Their culture’s worn thin. You, you’ve got a river running through you. Be proud of that.” She compared their heritage to rivers roaring after a storm–strong, alive, unbroken even after centuries. Anya didn’t fully understand, but the words stayed with her. The next day, she brought her lunch again. When the other children made faces, she ate slower, deliberate, eyes steady on the table. The rice tasted like courage.

The house was comfortable in its own uneven way, tile cracked at the edges, wallpaper fading, but the kitchen always smelled like something simmering. It was that strange kind of comfort you could never sell, because no price could buy back the sweat and years that built it. Her parents sometimes talked about moving north, about finding better schools or higher wages, but the idea always dissolved into the humid air. The house was too old to fetch much, too rooted in the swamp soil to be uprooted. So they stayed, not out of failure, but because it was the only place their ghosts knew to find them.

In the long afternoons, Anya wandered between the cypress trees, her feet bare, her imagination full of ghosts and gods. She’d talk to the frogs as if they were messengers from her ancestors, whisper to the wind like it might carry her words back to Japan. She’d never seen the country, but her grandmother’s stories made it feel like another life she’d almost lived, a place of shrines and fox spirits, of lanterns glowing in mist. In those moments, surrounded by the buzz of cicadas and the heavy sweetness of magnolias, she could almost feel the two worlds braided together: the deep South and distant Japan, both haunted, both beautiful, both home. 

It wasn’t far of a jump from a caretaker of a shrine to a caretaker of animals, and eventually, people. Anya brought home a stray kitten once, tenderly cleaning and bandaging the wound on its left, hind leg, and crying when her mom told her that the kitten would never walk completely normal. She begged to keep it, and her mom pretended to sigh about it, but said yes. 

Anya named the kitten Momo, after the peach blossoms in one of her grandmother’s stories. Momo became her shadow, following her through the tall grass, curling up in her lap when thunderstorms rolled through. The limp never quite left the little creature, but Anya didn’t mind. She decided that broken things just needed more love, not less. Her grandmother called that kokoro no yasashisa: a softness of heart.

After Momo came more animals. A box turtle with a cracked shell, a bird with a bent wing, a stray dog that she coaxed out from under the porch with bits of leftover rice. Her parents sighed, her siblings rolled their eyes, but her grandmother just smiled and said, “Every spirit you save will remember you.” The old woman meant it literally, and Anya, half-believing, half-hoping, took it as truth.

By the time she turned eleven, her room had become a small sanctuary of mismatched cages, feeding syringes, and bandage scraps. The shrine outside and her little hospital inside became one in her mind, both sacred, both places for healing. She would whisper the same short prayers over each creature she helped, the same rhythm she used when bowing before the hokora. It didn’t matter that her hands were clumsy or that her supplies were limited. To Anya, care was its own language.

Her Ojiisan noticed. His eyesight was failing, and his back bent like the bows of the cypress trees, but his mind remained sharp, and he began giving her more of his old books. Not just medical texts, but ones about plants, old field guides, even a tattered Japanese manual on first aid from the 1940s. Some of the margins were burned, and when she asked about the black marks, he said only, “War leaves stains on more than paper.”

She read everything. The medical books became a map of sorts. The body as terrain, veins as rivers, bones as landmarks. She liked that everything fit together, that pain could be traced and treated. But what fascinated her most wasn’t the certainty of anatomy; it was the way healing required both precision and faith. Her grandmother’s prayers and her grandfather’s diagrams didn’t feel like opposites anymore. They felt like two halves of the same truth.

Sometimes, in the heavy quiet after dinner, Anya would quiz herself, running her finger down the pages as she whispered names, femur, tibia, clavicle, scapula. The words felt sacred in her mouth, like incantations. She didn’t tell anyone that she dreamed of white coats and hospital rooms, of steady hands and clean bandages. It seemed too far away, like Japan, like every story her family had ever told about a better life.

Still, she practiced. When her father scraped his arm fixing the truck, she cleaned the wound and wrapped it neatly. When her sister caught a fever, Anya stayed up all night, sponging her forehead with cool water. It was the only time she didn’t feel afraid of the dark corners in the house or the sighing sound of wind through the swamp. In those moments, she felt useful, anchored, almost holy.

Her mother started to call her “the little doctor,” half proud, half worried. “You’ll wear yourself out on other people’s pain,” she said once, shaking her head as Anya sterilized a sewing needle with a lighter. Anya didn’t answer. She just smiled faintly and said, “Somebody has to do it.”

The years slipped by that way, quietly, the house filling with the hum of cicadas, the scent of miso and bay leaves mingling in the kitchen. Anya’s grandparents grew slower, her siblings moved further into the orbit of adolescence and small-town rebellion, and she stayed, rooted, watchful, tending to her small kingdom of broken things.

At twelve, she sat with her grandfather under the porch light, the same light that buzzed with moths every night. He pointed to the stars barely visible through the swamp haze and said, “You come from people who heal because they must. Not because the world asked them to.” His voice cracked, low and full of old memory. “Remember that, Anya-chan. Healing is how we survive.”

She didn’t understand then how deep that lesson went. But she would, years later, when she carried fear like a second skin.

For now, she pressed her palms together, bowed once toward the shrine at the edge of the yard, and whispered her promise into the humid night: I’ll keep them safe. All of them.

Chapter Text

By thirteen, Anya Musume’s world had begun to feel both too small and too wide. The swamp stretched endlessly behind her house, but she knew every root, every hollow, every tree where the cicadas slept. Beyond the trees, there was a road that led to town, a place she rarely went without her parents. Yet she was beginning to dream of what lay beyond it. Hospitals, universities, cities where her name wouldn’t sound foreign on anyone’s tongue. Still, every time she looked at the water, she thought of her grandparents and the stories that bound them to this soil, and something in her kept her feet right where they were.

Anya started volunteering at the vet’s office that summer. It wasn’t official–Dr. Harris didn’t pay her, but he let her clean kennels, fold towels, and watch him work. She learned to hold the animals still when they were frightened, how to speak softly so they’d calm. She liked the smell of antiseptic, the steady rhythm of procedure. When Dr. Harris stitched a wound, her eyes followed every motion. It reminded her of her grandfather’s hands when he used to mend things–clocks, toys, fishing nets–the quiet patience of fixing what was broken.

After a few weeks, Dr. Harris started letting her hand him tools. “You’ve got good eyes,” he said once. “And steadier hands than half the people I’ve trained.” She flushed at that, pride warming her chest. Her grandmother had always said her hands were gentle, yasashii te, and now she knew what that meant.

At home, her family noticed the change. She spent less time wandering the woods and more time reading by the light of a single lamp, medical journals from the library, anatomy books her grandfather had given her, even her mother’s old nursing guides from community college. When her friends went swimming at the quarry, she stayed behind to study. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go; she just felt that something larger was waiting, something she needed to be ready for.

But the South had a way of closing its arms around people and keeping them still. The town was too small for dreams that big, and everyone knew it. Her parents said maybe she could take classes online or at the junior college. They meant well, but Anya could hear the quiet defeat in their voices. The money wasn’t there, and opportunities didn’t come easy when you lived past the county line. Still, she kept her grades high and her hopes higher, even when it hurt.

Her grandfather passed away when she was fourteen. It was sudden–a stroke that came one humid afternoon while he sat on the porch. The world went still for a long time after that. Anya was the one who found him, slumped in his chair, tea still warm beside him. She didn’t cry at first; she did what she’d been taught. Checked his pulse, called for her mother, whispered a prayer. It wasn’t until days later, after the funeral, that the grief took her by the throat.

That night, she sat by the backyard shrine, knees tucked under her, Momo curled in her lap. She lit incense, the kind her grandmother had kept in a tin under the sink, and watched the smoke twist toward the stars. “If you can hear me,” she whispered, “I’m going to be someone who helps people. I promise.” The words felt heavy, like an oath.

The months that followed were quieter. The house seemed emptier without her grandfather’s voice. Her grandmother’s things had become sacred relics now, her parents busier than ever. But Anya’s purpose grew sharper, more certain. She joined the school’s health club, shadowed the nurse whenever she could, and started saving money from odd jobs, babysitting, cleaning, anything that got her closer to the dream.

At fifteen, she began visiting the local clinic after school. The nurses there knew her family and let her watch when they could. She memorized the smell of alcohol wipes, the soft snap of gloves, the steady pulse of life between antiseptic and exhaustion. It didn’t scare her, it made her feel calm, grounded. Healing, she decided, wasn’t about heroism. It was about endurance.

But sometimes, when the night came heavy and the swamp was loud, she still felt the pull of other worlds. She’d stand by the window, the old shrine visible through the glass, and think about Japan–the Japan her grandparents had lost, the one she’d never seen. It felt like an ache behind her ribs, that longing. She didn’t know if it was homesickness or inheritance. Maybe both.

In those years between girlhood and whatever came next, Anya carried the past like a heartbeat. She was the child of survivors, of two worlds that never meant to meet but did anyway. And though the world around her was small, she held the quiet conviction that she was meant for something beyond it, something that would honor every ghost who ever whispered her name.

The shrine in the yard grew alongside her. She painted the birdhouse anew each spring, hung charms made of ribbon and shells, added new offerings: a slice of orange, a small candle, a silver button. Her grandmother still called her miko-san, shrine maiden, half-laughing, half-serious. And when her grandmother’s hands began to tremble too much for needlework, Anya would sit beside her and hold the needle for her, both of them pretending not to notice the change.

Chapter Text

High school in the swamp town was an exercise in patience. The hallways smelled faintly of bleach and mildew, the lockers rusted shut at the bottom. The kids there were sharper now, less childish in their cruelty. They no longer said her lunch was weird; instead, they said she thought she was better than them. She didn’t bother answering. Instead, she carried the quiet dignity of her grandmother’s words with her, rivers roaring after a storm.

At fifteen, she took her first CPR course at the community center and came home with a certificate, proud enough to hang it beside the family photographs. Her mother clapped, her father smiled small, and her grandmother bowed her head slightly, murmuring a prayer of thanks to whatever spirit had given her granddaughter a calling. Anya thought it felt right, like her name, like the rhythm of her heartbeat when she heard a siren in the distance and wondered if she could help.

When she turned sixteen, that summer brought with it two new faces: Willow and Adonis. Twins, from Louisiana–refugees of Hurricane Katrina who’d been homeschooled for years after the storm tore their world apart. They’d arrived quiet, close-knit, almost spectral in how they moved together. The town whispered about them, as it always did about anything different, but this time the whispers were sharper, meaner.

“Those are the twins from Louisiana,” Anya overheard one afternoon in the cafeteria. “The weird girl and the one who thinks she’s a boy.” The words hit her like a cold wave. She didn’t know Adonis yet, but she knew that tone, the one that pretended to laugh but wanted to wound. It was the same tone kids had used on her when they mocked her lunch years ago, the same thin cruelty born of boredom and fear. She didn’t say anything. Just turned away and carried the sound home in her chest, where it ached like a bruise.

She met the twins at the community library a week later, where she volunteered after school. They were re-shelving books together, speaking quietly, like they’d been practicing silence for years. Willow had hair the color of honey left too long in sunlight, and a half-smile that looked like it had forgotten how to stay. Adonis was taller, all sharp edges and stillness, his hands careful, deliberate. There was something haunted in both of them, but something alive too.

Anya didn’t bring up the rumors. She wouldn’t. Instead, she offered them both a smile and a paper cup of water. Willow’s fingers brushed hers, cool and trembling. Adonis just nodded, his eyes darting away. That was enough.

They became nearly inseparable after that. After school, they’d sit beneath the cypress trees behind Anya’s house, their shoes off, feet buried in the cool mud. Willow told stories about the house they’d lost, how the water came fast, how the air smelled like salt and gasoline. Adonis rarely spoke of it, only adding quiet details: the attic where they waited, the dog they couldn’t save. Their words clung to Anya like mist, and she listened with the same reverence she gave to her grandmother’s tales of Japan. Both kinds of loss, she realized, lived in the bones forever.

Her grandmother liked the twins immediately. She said they carried old souls, that the storm had washed away everything but what was real. Sometimes, she’d make them tea and ask questions about New Orleans, about the levees, about the sound of the rain. Willow would answer with bright, vivid honesty; Adonis would listen, his thumb tracing the lip of his mug.

Anya loved them, not in the way stories demanded, but in a way that was patient and deep. They were hers, in the same way the swamp was hers: full of ghosts, heavy with memory, but still alive.

And though she still heard the whispers at school, snide comments about Adonis’s voice or the way Willow protected him like a shadow, she never joined in. Instead, she met every word with silence that cut sharper than any retort. When Adonis caught her once, eyes uncertain, she only said, “They don’t know anything worth listening to.” He smiled then, small and real, and the swamp seemed to breathe easier.

On late summer nights, they’d sit together on the porch, sharing sweet tea and secrets under the hum of the porch light. Willow dreamed of becoming a photographer, wanting to capture things before they vanished. Adonis wanted to study biology, to understand what made life endure after disaster. And Anya, she wanted to heal, to make people whole again. The three of them made promises under that humid, star-choked sky, promises of futures they couldn’t yet imagine, held together by the soft gravity of shared survival.

By seventeen and a half, Anya’s life had begun to feel like a delicate balance of grief, friendship, and ambition. The swamp was quieter now, or perhaps she had grown accustomed to its low, persistent hum. Momo, the limp-legged kitten she had rescued years ago, had grown into a steady companion, and the shrine remained her constant, a reminder that caretaking and memory were inseparable.

It was a muggy Friday evening when Willow, unusually nervous, tugged Anya aside after they had finished sorting books at the library. “I want you to meet someone,” Willow said, her voice softer than usual. Anya looked up from the stack of journals she was organizing and followed, curious.

Blythe was standing by the edge of the parking lot, leaning against a rusted bike rack, dark clothing that seemed to drink in the dim streetlight. Her hair was black and glossy, her eyes lined thickly in kohl, and her fingers tapped rhythmically against her thigh. Anya noticed immediately that she didn’t flinch at the swamp’s thick humidity or the distant mosquitoes, the way Willow and Adonis sometimes did.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Willow said, and her voice carried a shy pride. “Blythe.”

Blythe’s head tilted slightly, and a small, involuntary twitch of her left shoulder and blink cut through her cold exterior, and she smiled faintly. “Hi,” she said, voice quiet, but steady. There was a sharp intelligence in her gaze, the kind that seemed to measure the world carefully before allowing trust.

Anya extended a hand, and Blythe shook it, cool and deliberate. Anya felt a sudden kinship, another person who existed partly outside what was expected, someone who had learned to navigate a world that often refused to understand. The three of them walked back toward the Musume house, Willow slipping her hand into Blythe’s, fingers lacing naturally. Anya walked close, feeling the new dynamic settle comfortably around her.

The night air was heavy with the scent of wet cypress and magnolia, and Momo trailed along behind them, paws squishing into the soft mud. Blythe asked about the shrine, eyes wide, and Anya led her there, explaining the little rituals her grandmother had taught her, the small offerings they left for the ancestors. Blythe listened, her expression thoughtful, and then said, softly, “This feels...alive.”

Willow laughed quietly, a sound full of relief and delight. Adonis, as always, was quieter, but his presence was steady beside them. That night, the four of them sat on the porch of the Musume house, sweet tea in mason jars, sharing stories that ranged from small embarrassments to the weightier truths of loss and survival. Anya realized she had never felt quite so whole, surrounded by people who understood in different ways what it meant to exist on the margins, to hold past traumas close, and still reach for something like connection.

Blythe’s quiet intensity, Willow’s warmth, Adonis’s groundedness, and Anya’s nurturing all formed a fragile constellation that held steady despite the heavy air of the swamp and the ghosts that lingered in its depths. That summer, the world seemed almost large enough to contain them all, almost enough to let them believe that the future could be gentle as well as hard, that there could be healing alongside survival.

Chapter Text

By eighteen, Anya Musume was ready to carve out a life beyond the Musume house, even though the swamp and the shrine would always be part of her. She found a small apartment in town, two bedrooms, a narrow kitchen, linoleum that creaked when she stepped too hard, but it was hers. She moved her few belongings, her books, her bandages, her small collection of medical supplies, and even Momo, who now had an air of quiet dignity despite his crooked leg.

Even as she unpacked, she kept a small corner of her heart tethered to the old house. Every weekend, she returned to tend the shrine, sweeping the birdhouse, adding fresh offerings of rice, flowers, and candles, whispering prayers for her grandparents, for Willow and Adonis, and for the friends who had become her chosen family. She could feel the weight of her ancestors in the moss-draped trees, and it steadied her when the rest of life felt uncertain.

Willow and Blythe visited her apartment often, bringing laughter, music, and sometimes meals that Anya helped prepare with the care she had learned in the Musume kitchen. Adonis stayed closer to the swamp, helping with the animals or volunteering at the local clinic, but the bond between them never waned.

Living alone made Anya more aware of the rhythms of the world she was creating. She worked part-time at the community library and began shadowing the nurse at the small town clinic, learning the small, quiet victories of care. At night, when the air was thick and the cicadas hummed, she often returned to the balcony, looking out at the distant swamps, and felt both the pulse of her grandparents’ legacy and the possibilities of her own future.

Her apartment became a place of preparation, a space where she could practice her hands, her mind, and her heart. But the shrine was her anchor, the visible proof that no matter where she went, the past and the present could coexist. Every time she returned to sweep the leaves or light the incense, she whispered thanks for the life she had, for the friends she loved, and for the quiet promise that she would continue to heal, to protect, and to honor the lineage that had given her both roots and wings.

By eighteen, Anya had carved out a fragile kind of independence. Her apartment sat fifteen minutes from her parents’ house, tucked between a laundromat and a half-forgotten car wash, its paint sun-faded and its rent mercifully low. She furnished it with hand-me-downs: her grandmother’s teacups, a sagging couch that smelled faintly of cedar, and a handful of trinkets from the shrine. Every Saturday, she still drove home to tend it–sweeping away leaves, leaving rice, pouring a little sake into the soil. Her grandmother called it devotion. To Anya, it was oxygen.

She started working part-time at a small vet clinic not far from the edge of town. The doctor there, a tired man who smelled like antiseptic and tobacco, let her shadow him, and when she learned how to stitch a small wound on a dog’s leg, she felt something close to reverence. Helping animals made sense to her in a way people didn’t. 

At twenty, she met Curly and Jimmy. They were regulars at the diner across the street from the clinic, Curly all laughter and soft heart, Jimmy loud in a way that drew eyes. Curly had the kind of smile that could turn bad weather good, and Anya found comfort in their friendship, quiet but steady. Jimmy tagged along often enough, though his presence made her uneasy. He was unpredictable, too quick with jokes that felt sharp at the edges, too casual with touches on Curly’s arm. Still, she tolerated him for Curly’s sake. There was a sadness in him she recognized, even if she couldn’t name it.

Their little circle became routine. Curly and Anya would talk over coffee, sometimes until the neon lights buzzed above them like trapped fireflies, while Jimmy leaned against the jukebox, pretending not to listen. Anya never returned Jimmy’s looks, not out of disdain, but because she didn’t feel that way about anyone. She knew what she was: a quiet creature of care, not desire. It was a truth she didn’t share out loud, because the words for it were too new, too fragile in a place that didn’t understand. Aroace. She had whispered it once to herself and felt the word settle deep, like a seed finding its soil.

By twenty-four, she had settled into a rhythm. The vet clinic had hired her full-time. She still spent weekends at the shrine, her grandmother slower now, her hands shaking as she passed the broom. Sometimes they prayed together for things neither could name: safety, peace, or maybe forgiveness for the ghosts they still carried.

Chapter Text

It was late summer in 2017 when everything changed. The air was thick enough to taste, the sky bruised with thunderclouds that never broke. She had driven to the bowling alley that evening, resume folded neat in her purse. The clinic was cutting hours, and she needed something extra. She told herself it was just for weekends, just until things steadied. She didn’t see Jimmy’s car in the lot at first, or maybe she didn’t want to. He was leaning against the wall near the side door, half in shadow, a beer can glinting in his hand.

She almost turned back when she saw him, but he called out in a friendly tone, familiar enough that she hesitated. She told herself not to be rude, not to make a scene. That small, well-trained politeness that women are taught from the cradle. It was over in moments, but it took hours, because time split itself into eternity. (Looking back, it was frames of photographs. Time didn’t move right in the first place, because how could a man go from friendly, to sinister, to on top of her, to inside her, no, stop! Get off of me! Get out! It doesn’t belong to you! *I* don’t belong to you!) There was a shout, a scuffle, and then Curly’s voice, loud and terrified. By the time Anya could breathe again, Jimmy was on the ground, Curly’s fists coming down like thunder.

“Stop!” Anya’s voice cracked through the night. She was crying, though she didn’t know when she’d started. Curly froze mid-swing, chest heaving, knuckles split and raw. Jimmy lay groaning, his face barely recognizable in the flicker of the security light. Curly turned toward her, expression wide and horrified, like he was only now realizing what had happened. He took a half-step toward her, but she flinched, realizing her torn clothes and bloody knees (and something else that she’d throw up if she thought about) and he stopped. His voice came out barely above a whisper. “You’re safe now.”

He drove her home in silence. The hum of the truck engine filled the space where words should have been. Streetlights blurred past, and Anya stared at her hands in her lap, still shaking. She could smell the night on her skin, the sweat, the asphalt, the fear. By the time they reached her apartment, she was pale and hollow-eyed. Curly didn’t leave until she was inside with the door locked. He sat in his truck for a long time after, staring at his own reflection in the rearview mirror, unsure if he had saved her or broken something that couldn’t be fixed.

Anya stayed in her apartment that night, but the walls felt too close, too thin, like they remembered. The mirror over the sink caught her face, and she almost didn’t recognize it, the wide eyes, the smeared mascara, the way her mouth wouldn’t quite close. Her body ached in ways she couldn’t name. She turned the shower on as hot as it would go and stepped in fully clothed, the scalding water turning her skin pink. She scrubbed until her fingers bled, until every inch of her felt raw. The steam filled the tiny bathroom, but she couldn’t stop shaking. The sound of her own heartbeat filled the space, wild and uneven.

When she stepped out, she threw up. Her knees hit the tile, and she clutched the edge of the toilet as her stomach twisted. The sound that came out of her wasn’t human, it was all pain, no language. She stayed there on the bathroom floor for hours, wrapped in a towel that did nothing to stop the shaking. The house was silent except for her own ragged breaths.

Curly came back later, long after midnight. He didn’t knock; he just sat outside the door, back against the frame, until she spoke. When she finally opened the door, her eyes were red and swollen, her hair damp, quickly turning crunchy. He didn’t say anything, just held out his hand, knuckles still bandaged. She took it. That was all.

He stayed on the couch that night, not out of obligation but because neither of them could stand to be alone. He made her tea in the morning, the way her grandmother used to: black, strong, with too much honey. He didn’t look at her bruises, didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to fix anything. Just stayed.

When the sun came through the blinds, Anya finally spoke. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it was steady. “I’m pressing charges.”

Curly nodded. “Good,” he said, like it was the only answer that fit.

She packed her stuff and moved home the next day.

Once again, she was back to poring over the medical textbooks, this time asking herself how a man could do that much damage, examining the anatomy on the textbook and imagining it as her own. 

The next few weeks passed in fragments. Police reports. Hospital visits. The quiet humiliation of retelling the story to strangers who scribbled notes without meeting her eyes. Curly went with her every time, his presence heavy but grounding. He didn’t try to fill the silence; he just made sure she wasn’t alone in it.

The town whispered, like it always did, but Anya didn’t listen. She stopped going out except for work, stopped answering calls from anyone but Curly or her parents. The vet clinic gave her time off, and when she returned, she moved through her days like a ghost wrapped in gauze, gentle, cautious, but still moving. The animals didn’t look at her differently. They still needed her. That helped.

Her mother didn’t ask questions. Her grandmother only opened her arms and let Anya fold into them, trembling. The shrine in the backyard had gone quiet, but she still swept the leaves. Still left offerings. Still whispered thanks, though she wasn’t sure who she was thanking anymore.

Months passed in fragments. The dark corners of the house made her flinch. The sound of rain on tin felt too much like footsteps behind her. But healing, even the smallest kind, has a way of creeping in.

A tall, dark haired person brought in two cats, both rescue strays with matted fur and bright eyes. Their voice was calm, gentle, carrying a kind of warmth that didn’t demand anything. Anya had seen pity before, and this wasn’t that.

When the exam was done, and the cats were calm and fed, they lingered a moment longer by the counter. “I’m Rea,” they said, holding out a hand. “Short for Reader, technically, but nobody calls me that unless they’re mad at me.”

Anya hesitated before shaking their hand. Their skin was warm, hands calloused, and they didn’t squeeze too tightly. “Anya,” she said softly, as if remembering how to introduce herself.

Rea’s smile widened, a little crooked but sincere. “Well, Anya, you’re officially the first vet they haven’t tried to claw to death. I think that deserves a coffee.”

The way they said it wasn’t flirty or pitying, it was just… easy. Almost like they’d both been waiting for something ordinary to return. For a moment, Anya forgot how her hands still trembled when she was alone. 

That weekend, after closing, Anya went to the shrine again. The wind rustled the paper charms. For the first time in a long while, she didn’t whisper a prayer for safety. She whispered for beginnings.

Chapter Text

The year that followed was a trainwreck of broken timelines and sleepless nights. Anya turned twenty-five in silence, a candle flickering in the dark kitchen while her mother hummed softly from the next room. The months bled together, appointments, interviews, the slow churn of the legal system that seemed to stretch and warp time itself. The trial date loomed like a storm cloud she couldn’t escape.

Jimmy was finally charged. Curly had gone back to the police, jaw set and eyes dark, and said something–something that stuck this time. Whatever words he used, they cracked the wall that had been protecting Jimmy for too long. Other people came forward, too, one by one, hesitant at first and then braver. The truth had a way of spreading like wildfire once someone lit the first match.

Rea came to her late one evening at the clinic, after the last appointment. They stayed behind, hands shoved in their jacket pockets, watching the last of the sun stain the window gold. When they spoke, their voice trembled just slightly. “I heard what’s happening. About him. I should probably tell you something.”

“You weren’t the only one he hurt,” Rea said quietly, eyes on the floor. “You’re just the one who finally made them listen.”

The trial dragged on for months. Jimmy’s parents–wealthy, loud, and vicious–paid for lawyers who twisted words like knives. They slapped an NDA on Curly, gagging him from speaking publicly for a year. Anya could see how much it ate at him, the way his jaw clenched whenever someone brought up Jimmy’s name. But he stayed close to her, always. He drove her to therapy appointments, sat on the porch when she couldn’t sleep, kept her fridge stocked even when she forgot to eat.

When the sentencing finally came, the whole town seemed to hold its breath. Jimmy stood in the courtroom with that same smug look he always had, chin high, eyes hollow with disbelief. Not guilty, he’d pleaded, convinced the world was mistaken about him. The verdict came anyway: thirty-five years in prison. No parole. No good behavior. The courtroom erupted, his mother’s wail, the judge’s gavel, Curly’s slow exhale.

Anya watched the news coverage once, just once. His face on the TV made her heart stop, and she turned it off before the anchor could finish the sentence. The hum of the blank screen filled the room, louder than any voice.

She went to therapy every week. Sometimes she didn’t speak for the entire session. Other times she couldn’t stop, words tumbling out, raw and trembling, until her throat ached. Her therapist was patient, steady, never pushing her too far. It wasn’t healing, not yet, but it was movement.

Curly stayed the closest. He was the one constant in a world that had tilted sideways. They didn’t talk much about what happened, but they didn’t have to. Sometimes they just sat in silence, the hum of the swamp outside, the cicadas rising and falling like breath.

It wasn’t over. Not really. But Jimmy was gone, and Anya was still here. And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The year after Jimmy’s arrest unfolded like a long fever dream. Anya was still living at home by then, in the same weathered four-bedroom house that had watched her grow up. Her parents gave her space, her grandmother moved slower now but still kept the stove warm, and somehow, impossibly, Momo the cat was still alive, old, deaf, and stubborn as ever, sleeping in the same sunlit spot on the porch. The house had aged with them, its walls lined with quiet and memory.

Anya spent most days between the vet clinic and home, keeping her world small. The trial was still dragging its feet through hearings and statements, every headline another wound reopening. But she wasn’t alone anymore.

Adonis and Willow had drifted back into her orbit, closer than ever. They’d been her friends for years, but trauma had a way of binding people tighter. The twins had a knack for showing up exactly when she needed them, Willow with some new tea blend she swore would help with nightmares, Adonis with his endless playlists of songs that didn’t quite fit any mood but still made her feel something. They didn’t treat her like glass, which she appreciated. When she was quiet too long, they filled the air with harmless bickering, familiar as cicadas in summer.

Through them, Rea, Blythe (occasionally), and through the strange, tangled web of the small town, came Daisuke.

Rea lived out by the county line, in a weathered mobile home tucked behind the old sex shop where they’d been working since they were sixteen. The place was barely marked by a sign anymore, just a flickering light and a gravel lot full of potholes. Rea had a knack for making the place seem warm, full of laughter and faint music and the smell of incense masking rubber and smoke. That’s where they’d met Daisuke years ago, he’d come in with Curly and him, and never left. 

Daisuke was all sun and noise, half grease, half gold. Mexican-American, with a biker-boy charm that he wore like armor and tripped over constantly. His jacket was scuffed, his boots were worn through, and his smile was wide enough to make people forgive him for knocking over whatever was nearby. He called Rea his “bad influence,” though everyone knew he was the one who always dared them to do the stupid stuff first.

Anya met Daisuke one Friday evening when Rea invited her, Willow, and Adonis out to their trailer. The air was heavy with rain, the swamp humming with frogs, and Rea had strung up fairy lights between the trees to make the place look softer than it was. Daisuke was leaning against his bike when she arrived, a can of sweet tea in one hand, laughing at something Willow had said.

When Rea introduced them, Daisuke grinned. “You’re Anya, right? The vet with the shrine?”

She blinked. “The what now?”

Rea smirked beside her. “Told him about your hokora. He thinks it’s cool.”

“Cool?” Daisuke said, gesturing dramatically. “It’s metal as hell! You’ve got gods in your backyard, that’s hardcore.”

Anya couldn’t help it, she laughed. It came out hoarse, like she’d forgotten how, but it was real.

That night turned into more nights. Rea’s trailer became a haven for the whole group–a place where the noise of the trial couldn’t reach. They’d sit outside around a little fire pit Daisuke welded together from scrap metal, passing drinks, swapping stories, and ignoring the mosquitoes. Willow always brought tarot cards, Adonis brought snacks, Rea supplied the atmosphere, Blythe brought playing cards and dark humor, and Daisuke, predictably, brought chaos.

At home, her grandmother would wait up for her, dozing in her chair until Anya came back. “Out with your friends again?” she’d murmur, half-asleep.

“Yes, Obaasan.”

Her grandmother would smile, her face soft in the lamplight. “Good. Stay close to people who keep you laughing. That’s medicine, too.”

When the trial finally started in earnest, the laughter helped her survive it. She didn’t watch much of the coverage, only a few minutes before she’d switch off the TV, unable to stomach the sight of Jimmy’s face on the screen. He looked smug, detached, like the world was making a mistake he’d correct any minute. His parents were still loud and entitled, their money stretching the process thin, but Curly’s persistence, and the voices of the others who came forward, cut through it.

Rea came to her one night at the trailer, after everyone else had gone home. The air was still, thick with heat. They were quiet for a long time before they said it. “That night. The party. I overheard him talking about.. about making a woman bleed… and him saying he did his job right.. and he saw that I heard. He said something to me, something gross, about what he’d do if I wasn’t so quick. I told him to get lost. He didn’t like that. So I ran.”

Anya’s stomach twisted, bile rising. “He was at that party?”

Rea nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t say anything because… I didn’t want it to be about me. I don’t feel like it was enough, you know? But I thought you should know.”

The realization made her dizzy. That night–music, laughter, the feeling of being watched–it all slid back into place like broken glass reassembled. She excused herself, stepped outside, and took a long breath of the swamp air. It smelled of rain and decay and memory. Rea followed, close enough to be there but not close enough to touch.

“He can’t hurt anyone else,” they said softly.

And they were right. By the time Anya turned twenty-six, Jimmy had been sentenced to thirty-five years without parole. The town buzzed with gossip and anger, but she ignored it. When the news played his trial highlights on TV, she turned the channel every time. Some nights, Daisuke joked that they should take his old motorcycle and ride until the map ran out. Other nights, she’d just sit by the shrine, lighting incense and whispering the names of those who survived alongside her.

Her grandmother watched from the porch, wrapped in a blanket, Momo curled beside her. “You’re tending again,” she’d say softly.

Anya would nod. “Yeah. I am.”

Because in that year of wreckage, tending to the shrine, to her friends, to herself, was how she learned that living was a kind of defiance. And she was still very much alive.