I'm in Love with a Monster

Strange Encounters

RING RING RING

Elena groaned and buried her head under the covers. It was too early for this shit. She reached for her smartphone and pressed snooze on the lock screen. Why did she set her alarm again?

'Oh yeah, because the school tour is today at ten.'

'... Wait a minute.'

"FUCK!"

And with that exclamation, Elena was out of bed. She took a shower, threw on a t-shirt and jeans, put on her shoes and grabbed her things in record time. Especially given how she had just moved in yesterday and had no idea where most of her stuff was.

Her parents heard their daughter stomping around her room up stairs, and looked up. Eiko sighed as she placed a plate of pancakes on the table.

"Someone's up.", she said, exasperated, before she turned to her husband.

"Reminds me of a certain someone.", she smirked, causing Ash to look at her innocently, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Rolling her eyes at his antics, the Japanese woman went back to making breakfast.

A few minutes later, Elena came rushing down the stairs, her wet hair whipping behind her. She sat down at the table, got herself three pancakes and a glass of orange juice.

"Decided to set your alarm?", her mom asked as she passed her the syrup, after sitting down to eat.

Elena nodded, "I didn't want to sleep till noon and forget, so I set it, even if I hate the blasted thing."

Her mother nodded, "That's a good habit. You'll need that for when you start school in a week."

Elena mumbled an agreement and ate her pancakes with vigor. Eiko looked back and forth between her husband and daughter. They looked alike, talked alike, and even ate their pancakes the same way. Sometimes Eiko wondered how Sing and the others back in New York would react to Elena. She could imagine they'd be a mix of awed and terrified at the sight of Ash's mini me.

Eiko shook her head, though they may look alike and act similar, Elena and Ash could be very different. Elena didn't like large groups of people and got anxious very easily, she preferred to stay on the side lines and had never had many, if any, friends. She was quiet and studious, for the most part.

Eiko frowned as she thought the word studious. Her daughter's studies were the reason she and Ash had come back to America after so many years.

Elena had always been... different. Not in a bad way, they both adored their daughter and all her quirks. It was just... Japan didn't take well to people who are different psychologically.

Over the years Eiko and Ash had noticed that Elena did things most children didn't. She talked fast and couldn't stay still. She had a lot of trouble finding the words to express herself for even the simplest things if she wasn't talking to them or was feeling strong emotions. She stuttered and stammered and couldn't organize for the life of her, but she was practically a walking dictionary and was so very creative. She also had a tendency to hide her face in her clothes, which was why she owned so many hoodies.

They both noticed these quirks were getting her in trouble at school, and were starting to realize it was for things that weren't her fault. In the end, they both figured out it must be something that was affecting her mentally and took her to a psychiatrist, one of the only other foreigners in town, an Englishman who wanted to start a practice in the country.

They took their then barely fourteen year old daughter to him because Japanese psychiatrists, in Ash's and much more quietly her own opinion, tended to ignore patients' problems when it came to mental illness and learning disabilities.