Beautiful Moon
It was just another night in the city of Tokyo, the cars were driving by, the streets were filled with men and women alike coming from their jobs, and the city lights were as bright as ever, but there was one thing that stood out on that day, there was a full moon that was sparkling through the night sky and under that beautiful moon, I was then born into this world. My name is Mizuki, Mizuki Yoshida, my first name means “beautiful moon,” which was very fitting because of the day of my birth. My mother, Saki Yoshida, is the one person that I love the most in this world, she plays with me, she feeds me, she takes good care of me, and she even gives me baths! I never got to see my father or even my grandparents, and mother always got mad when I asked about father, I don’t know why. I would usually stay at the apartment while mother worked outside in the big city, and when she gets home, she usually has food and wonderful stories to tell me. I always wished I was able to go to school like the other kids, but my mother just had me home schooled and she taught me everything I needed to know about this world. Mother is usually very happy when she’s with me, but there are sometimes that she becomes sad and starts to tear up just like that one time at the park, so I placed my hand on her head and told her that everything will be okay, she would always smile at me and respond with an enthusiastic “yeah!” Mother loves me very much, so much that she would do anything just for my sake.
A few years have passed and nothing much has changed, other than the fact that I’m already ten years old! Me and my mother went out on my birthdays and we visited different theme parks, and they were really fun! On mother’s birthdays, we went to different cafés, I didn’t like coffee, but mother surely loved them, as long as she was happy, I was happy too! But then, everything went downhill when mother started going home late, every time she went home to the apartment, she was always with a different man, she smelled weird, and she looked like she was very tired, she didn’t even have time to tell me her stories anymore. She would always have phone calls with people that were telling her to pay some kind of debt, I didn’t know what mother did, but something didn’t seem right. Mother was panicking and I saw her pull out a packet of what seems to be medicine, so she started consuming multiple amounts of said medicine that made her all happy and weird, she just sat on the couch and fell asleep there. I was scared, mother wasn’t acting like how she used to, something is definitely wrong. The next morning, mother was packing her things, and she also told me to pack my things, so I asked why, then she just told me that we’re leaving, I just stood there by the door of my room and I felt frustrated, I didn’t know what was happening, so I just blatantly shouted at her asking what is happening. She slowly approached me, tears dripping from her face, she then put her hands on my shoulder and told me everything. Everything that happened in the past, everything from how father left mother up until how she didn’t have enough money to pay for medical bills when I was born, and now, she doesn’t even have enough money to pay rent, there were more things that I didn’t want to remember. All of that was a shock to me since I didn’t know anything about mother until then, it was all so sudden, I just stood there as I looked at mother. I was so shocked that I couldn’t even move to pack my things, so mother packed my things for me and grabbed my hand to leave the apartment.
Day and night, we went everywhere around the city, but we just couldn’t find any place to stay, we tried to get as much sleep as possible in trains so that we would have enough energy to go around looking for a place to stay, mother had to limit the amount of food that we eat so that we’d have enough money to spare for a place to stay, she’d also carry me whenever I get tired of walking around. It’s been almost a week of us doing this, mother still hasn’t given up, it was for my sake, and at that night, at that moment, I thought it can’t get any worse than this, it is impossible for something way worse than the situation that we are in now to occur. I was just standing there in the middle of the road looking at the beautiful scenery of the city, mother then grabbed my hand, telling me that we needed to hurry because the cars were about to pass, hurrying to get to the other side of the road, there was a speeding car that was coming our way, mother was extremely focused on getting through the road while she was holding me, but I was looking straight at the car and without hesitation pushed mother away from the car to the side of the road.
Sirens were blaring, people were running, and mother was crying next to me, I couldn’t open my mouth nor move any part of my body except my eyes, and so, I passed out. I woke up once again, but this time I was being rushed to a hospital room, I heard the doctors say that everything was severe and there was basically no chance of me seeing the light of tomorrow. At first, I was sad, since I was already about to die, there were still so many wonderful things that I wanted to experience with mother, but at the same time, I felt a bit of relief, since mother wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore, she would only need to worry about herself. As they were performing operations on me at the operation room, I could see mother at the other side of the window looking at me with a face that I never wish I’d see. The doctor then left me and my mother in the room, mother was crying, for it was her final moments with me, I slowly opened my mouth asking her to look out the window, it was another beautiful full moon, the same moon that was there when I was born. “When I die, I want to die with a smile on my face so that I won’t be sad when I become a ghost,” I said while I chuckle a bit. “I want you to smile too, mother, and as long as you’re happy, I’m happy too,” were my final words as the life line went flat and the sound from the monitor echoed through out the room, as mother’s last tear drop slowly falls from her cheek to my forehead, she give’s me one last kiss and smiles, all under a beautiful moon.
