10:30am
        She did not turn around the greet the visitor as she heard the vacuum seal of her room being opened, she remained sitting their, her eyes transfixed on the television, drinking in each morsel of information that flowed from their.          “Honey?” she heard.
        “Yes, ota-san?”
        “You heard.”  Mewagi Mizuno merely stated as she saw her daughter watching the special report from the journalist from outside the hospital, she pulled a remote control from her pocket to switch off the security camera in the room before approaching her daughter.
        “Yes, I did.”
        “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the one to tell you and be there for you, I had a few things to take care of before I came to see you.”
        “Of course, you had some things to take care of before seeing me, you always do.”  Ami spoke in a mechanical voice.
        “Honey, I didn’t mean it that way.”
        “No, I understand, you are a busy person.”
        “I’m never too busy for you dear, don’t ever think like that.  I was with one of the officers investigating the scene.”  She offered an envelop to her daughter.  “Asuka-kun wrote it for you, they found it next to him.”
        “What does it say?”  Ami asked, still not turning to face her mother.
        “I don’t know.”
        “The police would know.”
        “No, they don’t, that is why I was with the police until now, they gave it to me, on condition to my telling them its contents afterwards should it reveal his reasons.  I have a vague idea of his reasons, but I didn’t tell them, and I won’t, not unless I am sure, but Doctor Daiki has guaranteed that he would not publicize or acknowledge the letter, unless I gave him permission, he was sure that the other officers would understand.”
        “He was very kind, Doctor Daiki.”
        “Yes, he is.”
        Ami turned to her mother and accepted the proffered letter, she looked at it for a moment and placed it next to her.  She raised her eyes to her mother’s and swept her mother into a tight hug, “how?  How did it happen?”

Flashback
During Recess
        “Ami-chan, how would you kill yourself if you had to?”
        “I wouldn’t, life is too short and too beautiful to end by our own means.”
        “I’m asking, if, I’m not saying that I plan to.  I just wanted to know.”
        “I’d… I’d get an old car… fill it with flowers so that I can sleep on it, and then get a tube and plug it into the exhaust pipe, and then connect it into the car, then, close all the windows and just sit in the car.  It’ll be like falling asleep, no pain at all.”
        “Why an old car?”
        “They are developing this new technology, so that it makes it impossible for the insides of the car to be filled up with exhaust, which means that people can no longer use this method to kill themselves.  It’s a pity though.”
        “Why?”
        “Killing yourself by carbon monoxide leaves a beautiful corpse, the person’s cheeks are always rosy and all pretty, and`imagine, to be found asleep in a beautiful car dressed your favorite clothes, amongst all your favorite flowers.  It’s much better than jumping off a building, and splattering all over the place, worse still, land on someone else, or gassing yourself, because if the whole place explodes, you might get someone else.  The only problem is that it takes quite a long time and they might find you.”
        “Ami-chan, you have never had rosy cheeks, you have the palest skin of anyone I know, why would you want rosy cheeks then?”
        “There’s always a first I suppose.”
        “And what if you look absolutely dreadful?  You’ll have to spend eternity with dreadful looking rosy cheeks.”
        “Better than having all your bones broken by flinging yourself out the window.”
        “Trust me, Ami-chan, pale cheeks look better on you.”
        “And trust me, Asuka-kun, I plan to stay around long enough to make your life miserable, it might be the most painless death, but I’m never going to do it.”  Ami of 12 years said indignantly.
        “Where do you get this stuff from?”  Asuka laughed as he shook his head.
        “I read it, in a book about suicide.”  She replied solemnly.
        “That is just so you!  Trust you to get this stuff from a book Ami-chan!  I’m surprised you didn’t find out from an encyclopedia about ways of committing suicide.”  He said incredulously.
        “At least it’s credible.”
        “Oh, and I suppose that if you don’t get those rosy cheeks as aforementioned, you’ll come back and sue the authors and publishers!”
        “No, I’ll just haunt them for the rest of their lives, they do say that souls which still have things left undone will become haunting ghosts.”
        “I’m sure that you’d make an excellent ghost, pale cheeks, dark blue eyes and all, not to mention those locks of dark hair.”
        “Why thank you, I’ll make sure that you will be my first victim then.”
        “And I will be so honored by your attentions and graciousness.”
        “Why are you asking me this anyway?”
        “Nothing, just curious.”  The bell rings, “oh and Ami-chan, I think I like you the way you are now, alive, pale cheeks and all, I’ll see you at lunch!”  He smiled at her as he ran back into the classroom for his next class.

        “I killed him, ota-san, I killed him.”
        “Honey, its not your fault that he decided to end it this way.”
        “I was the one… I told him how to do it, I didn’t think he would take it seriously, it was five years ago, I didn’t even think that he would remember it.”
        “At least… at least he died painlessly, and…” Mewagi Mizuno smiled with irony, “with his promised rosy cheeks.  Dear, you helped him, he had many years of quality life because of knowing you, he had no real friends prior to your friendship, you gave him a friendship and unknowingly, drove him out of depression, about his past, about his mother’s death.”
        “Why, why did he do it?”
        “I think that he would have explained it to you in your letter.”
        “Tell me, tell me what you think the reason is ota-san.”
        Once again, holding her daughter in her embrace, she stared into space as she recounted the history of Asuka Akiyama’s life.

      Asuka Akiyama, the son of the gruesome murderer Nyoga Tsujimoto, Akiyama came from his mother’s name.  Nyoga Tsujimoto had been an epileptic, his illness brought under control by medication since he had been twelve years of age, until the fateful day when Asuka was a mere two year old baby.  Nyoga Tsujimoto was provoked and lost control, his medication was later found to be ineffective after usage for ten years due to build up of immunity of the drug, his colleague who had provoked him was found two days later, with 57 stab wounds to his upper torso, by a piece crude metal piping.  He had apparently bumped into his colleague later on at the car park and suffered an epileptic fit, enraged by the contempt shown by this colleague, he had picked up his closest weaponry and killed him.  No one believed him; he was convicted of murder.
        Until two years later, four months into his sentence, he was provoked by another inmate, he stabbed him 64 times with a butter knife, used a piece of a broken plate to slash a guard causing serious injury, then killing himself.  He suffered another fit; it was proved in his autopsy when they realized that his medication had been ineffectual and causing a relapse; and thus possible the cause for his first crime.  No one cared; he was buried as a convicted criminal, responsible for two deaths, permanent scarring of another, and his own death - but no one cared about the last.
        Asuka’s mother took hurried steps to change her son’s last name prior to his entering kindergarten, and placed her son in constant medical checkups for signs of epilepsy.  None was found.  Asuka knew of his father’s past, he knew of the possibility that he too could become a killer by some uncontrolled force within him.  That was where he met Ami’s mother, the pediatrician who arrived to replace his previous doctor, and where their friendship was forged - her knowledge of his dark secret, and his absolute trust of her secrecy.  He began to become concerned after the experience of time loss in Tokyo when he was found in the park, her mother had cleared him of epilepsy.  His suspicions of his sanity arouse once again, after seeing the grounds he walked on vanish into thin air in the Kuriverse, his final straw came with the knife in his hands; he then ‘knew’ that he was a murderer waiting to be waken.  He ‘knew’ that somewhere inside of him, was a dark figure lurking, and one day, he might not be able to hold him back, one day, he would kill.  He had been too afraid to confide in Ami’s mother his beliefs that someone had done something to his mind, and his wish to let the past remain buried prevented him from telling Ami about his fears without relating to his shameful heritage.
      Asuka Akiyama-Tsujimoto died believing that he was a danger to society.  He refused to cause the fear that his father had created with his murders - he decided to cause grieve instead.

        “Ami-chan, you have to be strong now, don’t allow yourself to wallow in self-pity, it wouldn’t be right, mourn as you need to, but the past has passed, live the present to change the future, isn’t that what you always said?  Ask yourself, why was he so important in your life?  What did he try to do for you?  Don’t let him down, don’t let yourself down, and most importantly, don’t undo everything that he had done to help make you the person you are today.”
        “Yes ota-san, I will try, I promise that I will try.”  Ami said as she bit back her tears and snuggled her head against the nape of her mother’s neck, “ota-san, why is everyone I love leaving me alone, here, by myself?”
        “Musumesan (my daughter), there are things in this life that are out of our control, and there are reasons that don’t seem like good solid reasons, we can’t question them.  Nevertheless you are never alone, there is always someone thinking about you, even if you don’t know it, you have still have your good friends, and somewhere, someone out there loves you, and when he finds you, he will never let you go.”
        “I just want all my friends back… everyone of them… everyone where they are supposed to be, I don’t want someone to love me, I just want friends…”
        “Oh, he will be your friend as well, trust me.  My dear, draw on the strength of Mercury to help you through times of difficulty and you will always emerge the victor.  No matter how dark life may seem at one point, there is light, have faith, we are all there to help you through it, even those passed, they are inside of you, they will cheer you on from wherever they may lie.”
        “Ota-san,” Ami took a deep breath and pulled away, holding her mother’s gaze she looked deeply into them, “I won’t let you down; I won’t let anyone down.  I am going to fulfill my duties as SailorMercury, I am going to fulfill my duties as a student, I am going to become a senior student next, I am going to be the valedictorian next year, ota-san, I am going to put it behind me, I won’t let it hold me back.  Ota-san, I am going to be the best that I can be.”
 
 

Additional notes:

I am strictly opposed to suicide, and the premature ending of life, please do not take what I have written above wrongly.  As you will read in my next chapters, I treasure life immensely; it is a unique gift from deities that we cannot hope to truly understand, impromptu deaths are not heroic nor an act of courage.  Again, I give my sincere apologies to anyone offended. - so… please, no flames?

And also, I regret the overly graphic descriptions of Nyoga Tsujimoto’s crimes, I took the descriptions from a casebook that I had been reading earlier…