Elements of Earth: The Element Trials

Chapter 6a, Kira: A debt for a tale of the little knight

1 nearly sprinted through Silicon's open compartment door. "Did you hear?"

"We heard." Dak confirmed. "The next trial will be in one week."

"If we know, why aren't we getting ready?" 1 sat against a cot alongside his brother. He looked around at the rest of us.

"It's only been a few weeks. I think we're... coming to grips with it." Dak tried to explain without mentioning Silane. The first trial after losing one of our own is always hard, not just the loss, but more deeply recognizing our own mortality. That our ten was once whole, that there were only six of us left and fearing who else we would lose next week. "Kira?" Dak was speaking to me, but everyone looked up when he broke the silence.

"Hm?" I replied groggily from my cot.

"I'm calling in a debt."

"What debt?" I rose.

"The bet from the remembrance. You bet less than half of the tens would send representatives."

"You want to call that in now? What do you want me to do?"

"Tell us a story. Tell us your story. Before you were taken."

"Is that really your wish?" I asked, a little confused. Then I realized why. I looked around the compartment. Before a trial, my ten usually trained, prepared, and gathered intel. But today morale was pretty low. He muddled over his answer before rising to a sitting position.

"Uh-huh." He confirmed.

"I was born in Rio..." my words trailed off as I remembered where I came from so long ago. Before I was taken to a secret facility in an unknown location, before I was element 14-5, I was Kirakira Hozumi. An unusual name for a Brazilian girl I know, but my father was Japanese. Once I lived a safe, comfortable life with my parents in Rio de Janeiro proper, not in one of its many favelas. My mother, Inhame De Deus, a Jamaican Brazilian woman named 'Yam of God' by the Catholic orphanage that raised her. I'm told naming orphans 'of God,' to be common. I was glad to have inherited my father's name instead. My father, Hozumi Touma, was a Japanese immigrant who fled Japan's militarism before the war for the potential of a more peaceful and prosperous life in Brazil. Touma tousan. He insisted I use the Japanese honorific, though my mother convinced him that as a Brazilian I must be able to call him by his first name. He was also my martial arts master. In that capacity, he required me to call him Hozumi Sensei.

We had enough money to afford a nice life, or so I thought. I had toys and books and never went hungry. But when I paid attention, I did sometimes notice my parents skipping meals. There was always talk between them about what they could do to earn more money. "If we had land we could grow and sell rice, but the cost of clearing any land after buying it or of purchasing already cleared land wouldn't leave us enough for seed, come time for planting."

After the war ended, father received a letter from his brother in Japan. There was talk of Estados Unidos breaking up the feudal lands and selling them at fair prices to Japanese farmers. Uncle said they could afford to purchase a farmstead if they pooled their resources together. It wouldn't leave much remaining coin, but my uncle's wife's dowry included rice from her family's sake business.

Touma tousan took all of our savings except for a few months living expenses and the cost of two tickets to Japan and went ahead to secure land for our future home. It's been months since he was supposed to send word and he hasn't returned. My mother and I moved out of our comfortable home into a shanty in a nearby favela, a hill slum, to save money. But every time I brought up planning for the future, she'd say "Touma was just delayed. Isn't it a good thing we left a forwarding address with Senora Santos?" Senora Santos was our former landlord. Eventually, I confronted my mother with what I believed to be the truth, to disastrous effects.