2 Chapter two

𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒊𝒓𝒕 𝒓𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒔

I was back home I could tell, but my vision was fuzzy. Lovely flat plains rolled as far as my eyes could see. I turned around to see the scenery behind me, there was a rice field behind a long dirt road that my parents were standing in the middle of. I know they were my parents, but their faces were a blur.

''Ignorance is bliss." were the toneless words that came out from my mother's unblurred mouth, yet it wasn't her voice.

My mother didn't know English. Everything but my father's eyes were blurred out and he had a hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to be. I'm used to unusual activity, but this hasn't happened in a while.

When I was younger, I had an imaginary friend and on one occasion she put her hand to her chest while saying "Irene Legas." Then she pointed one of her stubby fingers towards me, insisting I say my name.

I replied with "Saito." while staring at her blankly.

The child often had her hair in two braids, and they went down to her waist. Her skin was close to sepia and her wide caramel eyes were always sparkling with joy. Irene spoke a language I didn't understand, but we were connected in some type of way. She would only appear when I was outside. Irene didn't interact with anything around me, like she couldn't see it. She always tried to talk to me, yet she knew I couldn't understand her.

One morning Irene appeared while I was collecting leaves. The child had a stick in one of her hands. She wrote a sloppy five in the dirt and pointed at herself. Irene was five, and so was I. That's all I really knew about her.

"Hey!'' I heard a yell that woke me and came from far.

It was another man. His voice sounded strident and loud. I was still blindfolded, but I heard people running past me as it went silent. Then I could hear footsteps getting close to me. The cloth was gently removed from my face. I could see that I was in an alley and surrounded by cardboard boxes, wet newspapers stuck to the ground and garbage.

There was a man crouched over me. We were eye to eye. He had basic features, like a pointed nose, thin lips, soft eyes, and pale skin. The man stood up, I saw he was wearing a uniform. He was a policeman.

"You alright ma'am?" The policeman whispered.