a six-year-old brain prioritizes things strangely; asami could very vividly recall the first pet she had ( a simple cat, pale orange with thumb-sized black dot behind its right ear ). she could remember the birthday of a girl she hadn’t seen since she was six; exactly what her father said to her the first time he truly scolded her; her favorite pair of slippers. but the things her mother told her were harder. she could paraphrase sometimes, maybe, but even then, it was all a mixture of things everyone told her, at some point or another. ( so asami could apply eyeliner, winged at an angle, just as her mother said --- it was just how she said it, that was the issue. ) but she remembers her laugh. maybe because her father made a point of telling her when she was sixteen ( as opposed to six ) that the sound was just like yusuko’s, and he excused himself from the dinner table. but also maybe because she can think of the last time her mother laughed. a tense pai sho-down, between hiroshi and his tiny daughter. and the look of determination on asami’s face was enough to bring yasuko to tears with laughter. and when asami “won”, she’d tucked her chin into the crook of asami’s neck and pretended to eat her up. she didn’t play pai sho too often anymore, but when she did, she would involuntarily raise her shoulder to block the tickle that never came. and maybe it wasn’t remembering the words that mattered, but the feeling.
