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fromjupitertocentauri · 7 days ago

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✿ Inflorescence ; Chapter 1

✿ Summary ; Spring is the season of renewal—that’s what Moka Momohara told herself. It would transform her into something new. Something beautiful. She just didn’t expect it to bring Robert Leckie.

✿ Pairing ; Robert Leckie x oc

✿ Warnings ; war trauma, loss of family, displacement, and emotional distress.

✿ Taglist ; None. Feel free to join!

Early April of 1946.

Hope is a fickle creature.

Sometimes it appears in flashes—like a prophecy. Other times, it refuses to show its face or even acknowledge its existence. It simply is. Hope can be dangerous. Madness, after all, can be born from its longing. Yet it was hope that kept her alive all these years. Perhaps it was born from the ink of her father’s pen. Or maybe it lived in the calm of his voice—the voice that kept her awake late into the night, teaching her philosophy at the age of nine. He used to tell her: To be born is to be full of hope. If no one chooses to be born, does that mean no one chooses to hope? She thought of this daily. Thought of it through starvation, when she told herself that if she let them strip her of daydreams, she would lose herself entirely. She dreamt of a peaceful world. The pacifistic kind her father spoke of. The kind of world that simply couldn’t exist.

Hope was a creature that lit itself alight just to stay afloat—and now she was on fire.

Merely living was a quiet rebellion—against the empire that had stolen her language from her tongue. Against the empire that had her march for a man that saw her people as subhuman.

Rutherford. That’s where she had managed to end up. A local church had sponsored her immigration. Catholic.

She wasn’t sure she even knew what it meant to be Catholic. All she knew was that a pastor had taken pity on her—the girl who carried around a white kitten she’d found in the rubble. She fed orphans as if they were her own—because in some way, they were. She loved them. Now, they exist only in memory. Memories that spin through her mind: buildings crumbling to the ground, crushing the souls of innocent dreamers. Starving children who had stared at her while she cooked for them. Her mother’s eyes, so terribly glassy. That corner of her world had shriveled up and died. New Jersey. It didn’t look like Shuri. It wasn’t tropical. It was different—the roads were bumpy, the air thick. She glanced down at her kitten, smuggled into America. His fur was soft and orange. Chibi. Her sweet baby who had survived against all odds. She’d found him back in December, just months before her passage. Now, they were inseparable.

The family she’d been placed with knew the pastor well; they’d attended his congregation for years. An elderly couple with smile lines and eyes full of kindness. They were unlike anyone she’d met in the past decade.

How could anyone smile so recklessly? How did they always have a reason to smile?

Her eyes lifted from her lap, drifting towards the window of the car. Outside was a world that remained equal parts familiar and foreign. Rain drizzled from the clouds above, she only hoped it’d not progress to a thunderstorm. The trees remained mostly bare, though the faintest blush of green had begun to paint them. It reminded her of Plato’s theory of opposites: that life comes from death, and death from life. A thought her father had once explained to her in the soft glow of their kitchen lantern. She missed those lanterns. The wooden floor. Her father. She glanced at the cars that passed them by.

“Moka, what would you like for dinner tonight?” Mary asked, snapping the girl out of her thoughts.

“Soup would be good,” she answered.

“It is good weather for soup,” remarked Lawrence, nodding once.

Mary hummed in agreement—then let out a soft gasp. A memory had surfaced, rising like a bubble through the air… only to pop.

“My mother used to always say soup was food for the soul!” she exclaimed, her voice bright with sudden joy. Her hand lifted from her lap, bouncing with each word. She pointed upward—not at anyone, just upward.

Moka smiled. Her mother hadn’t said anything of the sort.

“I will make chicken noodle soup, everyone loves it.” stated Mary, a smile tugging at her lips.

“I do like your chicken noodle soup.” said Lawrence.

The car pulled into the driveway, slowing to a stop beside the house. Lawrence stepped out first and walked around to his wife’s door. Without hesitation, he opened it for her.

She stepped out gracefully — as she always did. He never let her open her own door.

Mary flashed a toothy grin.

“Thank you, Lawrence.”

“You’re welcome, my dear.”

From the back seat, Moka watched, her eyes quietly studying their interaction. Before she could form a single thought, her own door opened. Lawrence, ever a sweetheart, had opened hers as well. She scooped Chibi into her arms, a soft trill echoing from the cat’s throat.

“Thank you, sir,” Moka mumbled, her heels clicking against the cement as she stepped out.

“I’ve told you, Moka,” he said, pausing to shut the door before turning to face her. “You can call me Lawrence, or Dad.”

She nodded, carrying Chibi close to her heart. Dad. It felt foreign. When she was a toddler, she hadn’t crawled toward her father muttering “Daddy” with outstretched arms. No. She had called him Suu . Her heels clicked with every step toward the gray house. Some days, she still looked at it like it wasn’t hers to live in. It wasn’t where she’d grown up. She told herself it could be the place where she’d grow in other ways. Ways she hadn’t been able to before. She clung to the idea that one day, she’d feel like a woman. Even at twenty, she didn’t feel grown—not really. Somewhere inside her, she was still the scared little girl who had once clung to her mother’s sleeve in Shuri. Birds had begun to sing again—a sign spring was coming. During the winter, she’d promised herself: This spring will change me. The sunlight of life would drown the sorrows of death.

Inside the house, the walls were white, and the wooden floor and trim were stained a rich red mahogany. The color had come to remind her of a chocolate bar. She bent down, setting Chibi onto the floor. He scampered off to another side of the house. Meowing with each step. Noisy little thing. On the walls, pictures of family hung in neat rows. They’d recently taken her to a photographer—her photo now hung alongside the rest of their children. She stared at it for a moment.

“Am I their child?” Moka asked quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.

The thought made her want to cry. Yet, she couldn’t—not in the middle of the entry hall. That would be terribly awkward. She looked around. Lawrence had already settled into the living room to watch television. Mary had gone into the kitchen. Moka followed the faint sound of clattering pans and soft humming. The kitchen was clean and bright. The cabinets were white as snow, and the countertops were a soft sage enamel. She’d come to learn that many American kitchens used green or red in their color schemes. She preferred the green. Red reminded her of home—and not in a good way. There was one kitchen she truly loved: the Schneiders’ kitchen. Their counters were pink. A soft, pastel pink that reminded her of her mother’s silk blouse. It had matched perfectly with her jade pendant. Moka’s gaze shifted to Mary, who was already chopping raw chicken and tossing it into a pot of boiling water. She walked closer and looked into the pot. Celery, bay leaves, carrots, and diced onions danced in the bubbling broth.

Mary looked over, one eyebrow raised.

“Moka, are you going to cook with me?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Moka replied—still too formal.

“You’re very kind to join me. Could you add some salt and pepper to the soup?”

She nodded. The shakers were beside the stove—easy enough. She picked up the salt shaker, held it above the pot, and gave it a gentle shake. Once. Then twice. She repeated the motion with the pepper.

Mary poured the last of the cut up raw chicken into the pot, each piece dropping into the water with a plop.

“Now, you go relax, this soup will be done in an hour.” stated Mary, her sweet as honey in tea.

Moka turned and left. Down the hall, toward the front door, she stopped just short of it. Then turned to her right and jogged up the stairs. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Her heels announced her pace to the entire house. The sound bounced off the walls, sharp and unnatural in the quiet. She winced. Why so loud? Why is it always so loud? She didn’t want her presence declared. Not like this. Not in a world she still wasn’t sure she belonged to. Down another hall. Three doors down. There was her bedroom. It was decorated by another girl. Their biological daughter. The one that belonged here. Her name was Rosemary. The girl must’ve loved pink as much as she loved Jesus. The blankets were pink with white lace trim. The curtains were white, patterned by pink petals. The wallpaper wasn’t pink. It was plain. White. There was a desk at the window—the chair’s cushion was baby pink. Dainty. Moka sat at the desk, retrieving a pen. The pen was hers. No. It was her father’s pen. She stole it. Kept it. It was used to sign his name. It was used to grade the papers he read. Essays about Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates–the minds the world chose to adore. She adored his mind. Her eyes flew around the room for a moment. All this bubblegum reminded her of her mother. She loved pink. She used to dress Moka in pink kimonos during the war.

“Pink is the color of a shy beauty,” mumbled Moka—repeating her mother’s words. Pink. The color of blush.

Without another thought, she began searching for her journal—a journal she had bought when she arrived in New Jersey. Between its lines, she wrote in Okinawan. Her pen met the page. She wrote about her day. How they’d gone to visit a family friend. How the woman had looked at her with a judgmental gaze. Moka understood that look. It was the look of someone who saw her as not American enough. The kind of look that made her want to shout. She was human—why couldn’t they treat her as such? The anger boiled beneath her skin, though it twisted her stomach into knots.

“Moka,” Mary stepped into the room. “This weekend, we’ll be going to a cookout hosted by a family from the church. Do you have a nice dress for the occasion?”

Moka’s eyes widened at the sound of Mary’s voice.

“I have a lilac dress. The one I wear to church,” she answered.

A soft sigh fell from Mary’s lips. “Let’s get you a new dress before the cookout, okay?”

A nod.

“There’ll be a boy there I want you to meet. A writer. He’s sweet,” added Mary.

“A writer?” Moka repeated.

“Mhm.” Mary leaned against the doorway, crossing one leg over the other. “He’s someone you’d understand.”

Someone she’d understand. The words sank into her mind like a burning ship in the ocean.

“Okay,” Moka breathed.

“You need to make friends. You can’t live in solitude forever,” Mary remarked, moving to sit on Moka’s bed.

“Haven’t many lived in solitude?” posed the girl. It wasn’t that she wished to live in solitude. Loneliness scared her. It scared her in the same way thunder did.

“Do you want to be one of many?”

“Aren’t humans always one of many?” asked Moka.

Chibi walked into the room, announcing his presence with a gentle trill. He brushed against Mary’s leg before leaping onto the desk with a soft thud.

“Moka, do you wish to be lonely?”

“Not really.”

“Then stop isolating yourself.”

Mary stood from the bed and left. Her words had felt like a slap across the face. Stop isolating yourself.

Moka didn’t see her behavior as isolation—only an attempt to lick her wounds. She’d been licking them for years. Her eyes drifted to Chibi. He had begun to purr, rubbing his face against her cheek in one smooth, comforting motion. Chibi never made her feel like a bug crushed beneath the weight of life. She stared—just for a moment—and let her thoughts wander. A moment too long.

The tears welled. She sucked in her lips. A half-suppressed whimper escaped her throat. Wiping her face with her wrist, she felt like a child again, burdened by a world altogether too painful. Her body curled in on itself, bones too sharp beneath her skin. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d folded. Her malnourished frame trembled. It felt like her body was trying to disappear—but to disappear was to let them win.

Another whimper. Another sniffle.

A scream echoed in her mind. Not hers.

A mother’s scream. Her child had died in a bombing.

“Why won’t it leave me alone?” she whispered, desperate for an answer she knew wouldn’t come.

Chibi meowed, snapping her back to reality.

“Spring,” she said, to herself—or maybe to him. “Spring is my renewal, isn’t it?”

Another soft meow.

“Yeah,” she whispered. Spring.

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