Welcome to Gaia! ::

I am a mother.

Was a mother.

My husband was taken from me by a work-related accident.

Then, my only daughter was killed by a person I had not known I had offended.

Someone once asked me why I seek only to return my daughter to life, and not my husband.

I told her that a woman who has lost her husband is called a widow. Thus, it is a part of life if you lose your husband. Painful, but accepted.

There is no word for a widow who outlives all her children.


"Mrs. Fujino, I'm sure you know why you're here," Mr. Bradshaw said.

I knew better than to answer that with anything other than, "No."

He shook his head, probably having expected that. The other teachers knew I wasn't an idiot, and it wasn't like he wouldn't hear us talking. He'd also hired me. "There are rumors of you sleeping with a student."

I stayed expressionless. I'd noticed an uptick in the number of students hitting on me in the last week, but hadn't yet heard why. I figured they thought I was safe now.

"As you know, it's against the law to do so. The student in question isn't legal, meaning...." He sighed, and again shook his head. "By district policy, I'm supposed to fire you. Can you offer proof that you aren't?"

"Who am I supposedly sleeping with?" That was a stronger reason why the other students thought I was available.

"A Nathan Carson. Junior. Seems you had him for Japanese 1 last year."

Ah, Nathan. "You have such a good memory," I said, and upon seeing his frown, realized he knew I wasn't pleased. That probably contributed to me appearing guilty. "No, I'm not. My husband died only two years ago. I'm not ready to sleep with someone again." This was true. However, in my experience, Americans are a lot faster at recovering from death when it comes to sex partners. Well, most of them.

"That's what I thought," he replied, nodding. "And I'd be satisfied with that if it weren't for the fact that you were seen driving away with him in your car Monday."

Ugh. Monday had been bad. I had to rush out, Nathan had forgotten his keys, and so I'd given him a ride home. I was a friend of his parents, but as to why, I couldn't say for legal reasons. Don't worry, I mention it later, when it's more relevent. "I took him home. His parents and I are friends."

He spun a pen around in his hand, a nervous habit many of us at the school had, including students. Though I was pretty sure he didn't know it, he was about to tell me that wasn't sufficient for whatever reason.

"I already called his parents," he said, and my hopes sank. There was only one possible conclusion to this conversation, and it had been decided before I even opened the door.


Back home, I waited, patient though irritated. I was lying on my bed, ears and tail out, relaxing my form control enough to not feel tensed. Finally, the door opened, and closed. A normal person might not have heard it, but I wasn't listening with human ears. I stood, and the room recoiled in fear. I strode evenly, silently, to the room which I could expect my visitor to go first.

“Nathan, a word,” I said softly.

“What?” he said, completely unconcerned. He clearly hadn't heard yet, which meant I had a bomb to drop.

So I dropped it. “Your friends really like your bravado, don't they?”

He turned around, lowering his phone. “What's that mean?” He'd known me long enough to know that not all compliments from me were truly compliments, but he wasn't very good at picking up indirection.

“Did your friends think it funny that you claimed to be sleeping with me?”

He shook his head. “Nah, they thought it was sweet that I was banging the … hot … Japanese ....” My glare caused the fade out.

“Did you think, even for a moment, what would happen if a parent or other staff member heard such a rumor?” He stayed silent, which was answer enough. “I've been suspended,” I said.

He just stared at me, going through the psychological steps of dying, and finally said, “s**t, I'm sorry. I wasn't –”

I held up a hand to cut him off. “I know. But the school is required to look into it, and that means our living arrangements will become somewhat public. Walk carefully with your jokes, okay?” He nodded, and I left, returning to my own room.

You might be wondering why I left it at that. I'll try to explain.

He, like his parents, is a wizard. No, I'm not his mother – he was simply staying with me as they went to Ireland to get more supplies. As a friend of the family, I was asked to watch over him, and this includes his magic. This is not to say I'm a witch, no, quite wrong. I'm a fox, something akin to the kitsune of Japan. I'm also old enough to be his mother's grandmother (or further), though, as previously mentioned, my only daughter was killed before her seventh birthday. So, his lies about me sleeping with him? Yeah, definite “no.” He wasn't even 17, and I wasn't a pediaphile.

Unfortunately, age doesn't matter with some actions, and his lie was one of said actions. My reputation, at least for a while, was stained. I had a few doubts as to whether or not there was sufficient bleach in the pending investigation to clean my reputation, but I also realized I had little choice.

I mean, how was anyone supposed to believe I wasn't sleeping with him? He had been living in my house since the start of the semester, and short of watching one or both of us - a violation of any privacy laws - it was impossible to know for certain we weren't. His parents, according to Mr. Bradshaw, had laughed at the accusation; they knew me and how I had been around my husband. Anyone who had seen that would have no doubt about my relationship with Nathan, but that wasn't exactly something I flaunted at the school.

Nor was it something many of the parents of my students had seen. Very few of them had met me, fewer still my husband, especially since children are only at high school for four years.

This was looking to be a long sabbatical.

My phone rang, breaking me out of my thought prison. I didn't recognize the number, so I sent it to voicemail. They'd realize they had the wrong number when the message played.

Ironically, they didn't get the message. They called a second time, and as I sent them to voicemail again, I verbalized, "I don't want to talk to you."

I realized, though, that I did want to talk to someone. Being silently alone wasn't my style. So, I picked up the phone and started to dial Jordan.

And closed the phone before finishing her number. She was Nathan's mom, and I didn't want to complain about my situation to the mother of the cause. It just felt awkward to even imagine doing so. That's before you take into account the time shift, which would place her at 9:30ish, which, I guess wasn't too late, but still. That didn't remove the discomfort.

I scanned through my phone list. Most of the contacts were friends from my husband's former place of employment, or my friends from school. Neither of those groups were people I really wanted to talk to; the men might interpret it as me straying from my husband, the teachers would ask for details as to my guiltlessness. That left the automated systems for work and bills, and a handful of non-work friends.

Of these, I dialed the one who had helped me through more of my past than the others.

“Thank you for calling Linda's Investigation Agency, this is Courtney, how may I help you?”

Must have been a new girl, though to be fair, the last time I had called was four years ago. I really needed to call him more. “Transfer me to Alex, please.”

“And who may I say is calling?”

Damn. Now she'd get curious if I told her my current alias - I had no prior history of calling, so how would I know who Alex was? - but at the same time, no way I was going to give her one of my past ones. “Fujino Masako,” I answered. A click told me that at the least, I wasn't going to be delayed.

“Miss Fujino?” Alex's sweet voice asked immediately. “I've been expecting you.”

I smiled into the phone. It might seem like I had a school girl crush on him, but I'd grown out of that decades ago. He was, however, an old friend, dating back to the early 1920s, actually.

"I bet you have. I'm what, four years overdue?"

"Something like that. So, what can I do for you?"

I sighed. "So, the ward I have - you remember, Jordan and Trevor's kid? Well, he decided to start the rumor that we were sleeping together."

Alex sounded surprised. He may not have been, I don't know. "Aren't you twice his age?"

"Yeah, but like my friend said, 'Asian women look younger longer, and look older sooner.'"

He understood, and rephrased it back, "So you're saying that the kids think you're still hot."

"Pretty much."

His voice lilted down, which I knew to be confusion. "That merits a call after four years?"

"Yeah," I said, with mock cheerfulness. "Because the little dumbass keeps his mouth flapping."

"Oh," he replied. "Oh. Did the school...?"

I sighed again. "I'm on forced sabbatical. For the duration of the year, and until their investigation finishes up."

"Oh, Masako, I'm so sorry. That's gonna be rough."

I rolled over on the bed, looking at my nails against the ceiling. "You're telling me. Of course, I haven't talked to his parents yet to find out how they want me to handle it, but I have a few ideas."

He didn't respond, so I verbally prodded him. "Alex?"

"Turn on the TV to channel nine," he said.

His tone told me it was bad, so I went downstairs and flipped the TV on with a morbid curiosity. It didn't look like anything special, just the typical Oklahoma politics of blaming the victims and those who tried to prevent victims from being victims, so I said back, "Okay, why?"

"Just wait for it, it should flash by again soon."

Oh, so it was some minor thing. "Is it funny? Can I YouTube it instead?"

A commercial break hit, and Alex said, "Shoot, I'm getting a call. Later."

I hardly heard him. The reporter, snug in her office and job, had just told the whole state about a breaking story of a teacher-student sex scandal at Putnam North, with details at eight.