January 8, 1992

Dear Hisui,

It's still very difficult for me to "speak" of all this, but you've been asking and have a right to know, now that you're old enough. This way may seem more impersonal, but it's something I got very used to, in the years your father and I were apart, and I feel more comfortable expressing myself this way, still.

It was January of 1973, and your father was just coming up on 18, while I was still only just a month into my 17th year. We'd been living on the island a few months, maybe four, maybe six -- long enough to have favourite bars, and dealers who knew what we liked. In any case, you wouldn't have recognized KyouMu then, I think. AoC didn't yet exist, there was no music industry to speak of, and little else that smacked of the "legitimate." As much as it is a den of thieves and murderers now, it was more so then. Really only Chinatown and KuWai were as they are now.

I missed my parents terribly, but we were happy enough. I was working the waitressing gig, your father hauling down at the docks. We got by, but I can't say I'd recommend it, if you've got a choice. We thought we didn't, but the why of that is for your father to explain, or not, as he chooses. In any case, our lives were, as far as we were concerned, quite alright.

Within the month I would be on the brink of death and running up hospital bills we couldn't even dream of paying. Midway to my 18th birthday I would be mute, pregnant, and on a ship back to England to my mum and dad for help. Things moved so quickly in those days.

I wish I could say that the night it happened is a blur, that I don't remember it. But I do, in absolute crystal clarity. We were walking home, soused to all hell, and we'd been there just long enough to think we knew how to play the "safe street, gang street" game pretty well. Besides, we had steel-cap shit-kickers and good old Manchester attitude on our side, right?

The kid couldn't have been a day over 13, and he was more scared than we were by far. But had the gun, and a gang waiting in the wings for him to come back blooded, where we had only drunken courage and youthful stupidity.

I think that, even had I just given him my wallet, he'd have shot me. As it was, his first shot went wild with me having my boot in his face and all. If we'd had any sense, he'd not have got off a second, but we fought like rowdies, our instincts didn't account for guns well.

Your father had slammed him to the ground and was reaching for the gun when the kid got a good hold on the trigger again. I moved, meaning to stop him from shooting Sid, I think, and that more or less saved my life -- the bullet hit the side of my neck, and not my head. After that it truly was a blur, and I don't remember much.

I remember the hospital, and a lot of pain. Machines beeping and hissing and dripping god knows what into my veins. More than anything I remember your father's fury that they could do so little, and yet charge so much. Reconstructive surgery is expensive though, even in socialized health care systems, and given the choice between me breathing through a tube in my neck and an expensive patch job, your father signed off on the latter.

It was all harder on your father than it was on me -- and it was HARD on me, so I can't imagine what it was like for him. But as soon as I was stabilized, he up and abducted me in the middle of the night -- which makes that the largest cheque we have ever cut out on.

That night, when Sidney spirited me out of my hospital room, was my first visit to Chinatown.

Of course, he brought me to Zheng. It was a long time after we joined SC that we found out that the healer who gave us sanctuary was in fact Siva's brother. He hid us, and fed me ridiculous amounts of gai. I spent much of the three months following my hospital stay stoned out of my mind, but becoming rakshara held more hope for healing well than lingering in a hospital did.

As you well know, I never did heal entirely -- we discovered gai too late for that, but the scar tissue filled in better than we had hoped, and the paralysis eased to the point that I could swallow again, and given the extent of my injury, that was miracle enough.

I owe Zheng my life, really -- I couldn't have lived the way I was, tube-fed and with my neck more of a mess than could ever be hidden. And as for debt we owed the hospital, we did pay that back, with our very first royalties cheque and another half dozen after that besides.

It was very shortly after I was able to swallow again that I got pregnant with you. The two events are not unrelated, I'd wager. But that was the final straw, in a sense -- we needed more help than ever Zheng could give, if we were to keep you, so Zheng booked us passage back to England, and my parents, which is another story entirely.

Love,