Code Lyoko: Revolutions and Evolutions

Chapter 78

AN: I hope you all are well and safe this week. This chapter came after a fair bit of prayer, and I'm quite content with the results. I thank all of you, especially newcomers from Italy, the U.S., and France. You all are such a delight to write for, and I'm grateful for every one of my reviewers, especially those who have been there from the beginning.

I thank you all for your support, and I'll see you all next chapter.

Pagliacci-11.

The Ishiyamas had returned from Japan. Sadly, as Yumi realized, no longer in the same house. In many ways, she understood, but it by no means made it easier to bear the grief. Hiroki was still to go to Kadic and Yumi to resume her education. However, given the lateness of Yumi starting the semester, Akiko opted to receive a paycheck from her saved allowances and keep Yumi at home for a version of homeschooling. Yumi wasn't against this per se. For her, there was at least one central element of benefit anyway; she could get the factory far quicker than the rest of the group as the new house was located just five minutes from the factory's small island. In many ways, she could act quickly if it was ever needed.

As the family approached the new house, the home was a bit nicer than they had. But to Yumi, it wasn't nearly as simple as that. The old home had countless memories, happy memories as well as bad ones through the seemingly ceaseless arguments, but it was the happiness she chose to remember; she had to. Yumi looked over her new room; it was nice enough. It was spacious, a bit more so than her prior room. But this house felt odd, cold, and uniform. It was not ugly, far from it, but she couldn't escape it, this feeling that hemmed her in. Just what it was, she couldn't be sure, but all she knew was that this was a house, not a home.

When she was in a book club with Magali, she remembered how Magali loved Dracula's aspect as they read the book for a jump start on the advanced literature class. Yumi, for extra-credit, helped Ms. Kensington with grading, which of course, was vetted to ensure a lack of bias. However, a point Magali had made was impressive. "He calls it a house, not a home. Upon further reading and the understanding of what Dracula is, house is the apt description. A home is warm and inviting, usually the seat of a family the root of true belonging. To have a house, so distinctly termed as such to a visitor like John Harker, Dracula speaks deliberately. He is immortal and to a man turned into an immortal, a home can never truly exist."

Magali's assessment seemed to reverberate with Yumi. This was not home, merely a house. In many ways, Yumi knew just why her mother didn't go back. It would mean packing article by article and going through a lot of discomfort. Yumi had heard such things from those in her class with more than enough understanding to comprehend it fully. Curiously, however, Akiko had arranged for movers to move all their effects to the new house while she superintended the more sensitive information over the next few days. Even though the furniture was fully moved here and had the fixtures of home, it still wasn't home.

As Yumi went through the boxes in her room, she found all her clothes had been painstakingly folded with remarkable precision. The clothes were tightly folded into themselves, almost as if they were precision bundles of fabric, compacted and compressed. Her shirts had been given this treatment that she saw they were elegant and precise small rectangular affairs. Her jeans and her pants were folded directly along the pantlegs and then folded again to where her pants were of a similar uniform element. Whomever packed her clothes, for some reason, Yumi wished to learn just how to do this. So, taking a pair of jeans, she unfolded them and made note of what she was undoing. So, this method was straightforward. However, her shirts proper were so precise in their presentation she found they were tightly folded, but whatever printing or images were on her shirts were precisely folded so that she could see what the image or logo was.