Molly Route: Confession scene
 
[This date planned out for a week, Molly was to take Hisao to visit her father Mr. Kapur. She found out about the letter and misinterpreted it to be a love letter than a 'Dear John' letter. The plans for the trip go on, however, but the couple find themselves in a spot to talk about it on the train ride back.]
 
Molly: Nobody expects the last things you'll do, see, smell, or hear. Nobody should expect the last thing those around you would do as well.
Molly: Life ends abruptly, when you least expect it. It could be from falling trees, the wind, bad weather, a sudden earthquake. Man-made, even.
Molly: That's why, Hisao, that's why I sometimes wake up screaming in the night, that's why the phantom limb pains are more real for me.
I remembered that night we spent together. Afterwards, she held on to me and didn’t let go. When she screamed both of us awake at two in the morning, when she went back to sleep crying in my arms.
Molly seems to struggle explaining all this to me. The train ride back from her father’s house has been silent, but with nobody in our car, we can speak freely.
That’s probably why it seems easier now, because we’re forced to talk about our feelings, because there’s nothing else to talk about.
Molly: I told you my mother used to work for an oil company in Dubai. My father moved to Japan when I was four because our parents were having a rough marriage. We stayed behind in India so my mother could finish her education.
Molly: I barely remember growing up in the apartment in the slum in Mumbai. It was just a dream, like all normal kids have, where they quietly awake from infantry to childhood. Mine was just filled with a few more rags than riches. But my mother said it was murder, risking her children to live there.
Molly: She said she could no longer stand raising her children in that place anymore.
She lets out a small smile, her breathing no more than a stagger, it’s obvious she’s holding back tears now.
Molly: Then, my mom, little brother and I, moved to Dubai after her schooling was done. It was to get a better lifestyle, to earn more. That was when I was in my second year of high school.
Molly: I lived a sheltered life then. Death, pain and sorrow were just things on the television, in the news, even if it was only a desert away. War was only an image.
Molly: It took me a while to adjust, but after a couple months, I had finally made some friends. But when you go to a school where the class grew up together like that private academy. You’re forever the ‘new kid’.
Molly: I never really settled down. Maybe that’s what it feels like for you?
I thought about it, maybe she was right.
The letter from Iwanako, it itched at the back of my mind.
I was ripped from my old life and suddenly placed in this new one.
But even though I’m dealing with the present, it feels like there’s much more to do to heal the scars from the past.
Or do we need to keep moving, keep moving on? Would the scars stay forever?
Hisao: I can’t say for sure.
Hisao: After my parent’s told me I would be going to a new school, I felt crushed.
Hisao: There were no formal goodbyes, no endings, no closings. It was like I was whisked away to Yamaku in an instant.
She simply nodded, looking out at the passing scenery.
Molly: And this Iwanako girl, what happened to her?
It was inevitable.
After she had discovered the letter for herself, I had tried my best to explain it to her.
Hisao: She came every so often, like a concerned person would.
Hisao: But eventually, the distance between us became apparent.
Hisao: Eventually, she stopped coming. I had lost hope. The last time I saw her, she just said ‘Goodbye’, and that was it. There was really no close to it all.
Hisao: I didn't know that my old life would end so suddenly. I thought then, that I could return to it, that I could salvage it.
Molly took a deep breath, then, the tears started streaming down her eyes.
Molly: That day I lost my legs will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Molly: Ever since the war first started, my parents were talking back and forth between each other, settling disputes, all in the safety of my brother and I.
Molly: It was in December 2012 when Israiel finally went to war with the Arab countries. My mother was concerned, especially with the growing violence in that part of the world.
Molly: My father wanted us to move to Japan the week after the bomb exploded at the Burj Khalifa. Israeli nationalist terrorists were basically overrunning the Middle East. It had all turned to torment again, and we were in the middle of it.
Molly: The days seemed more…tense…
Molly: Police and military stood on every corner of the streets in Dubai; we were required to carry ID with us at all times.
Then, she pulled out a small card, slightly torn down the side with a younger picture of her, and tossed it on my lap.
Molly: After the taxi dropped us off at the airport, my mother looked at me and gave me her last smile.
Molly: Comfort in the fact that we were escaping once again to a new home, a new safe place. She told me this would be our last move before we were really home.
Molly: Then in the airport lobby, that event that you least expect, it happened to me.
Molly: Israeli nationalist terrorists had stormed the building. They began shooting up anyone they could see moving.
Molly: The scar on my stomach? A bullet had passed through my mother and hit me.
Molly: She had taken the fatal shots for me, all I got was a wound as compared to her and...m-my brother...
Molly: Those movies and video games are all wrong. It’s not just a little spot of blood on the wall. I never really understood exactly how much blood the human body holds...
Molly: I was laying there among the piles of bodies. Among those were my dead mother and brother.
Molly: The dreams I still have? Their glassy eyes still appear in my mind; even while I’m awake I can sometimes see them. I’m afraid to go to sleep even. My doctor said I still have PTSD from the whole event.
Molly: But when I'm with you, it all seems to go away.
Her sobbing was in full effect now, I wrapped my arm around her, and she pulled me closer.
Molly: When the military appeared at the airport, they had taken me as a hostage and demanded safe escape.
Molly: They knew that the military wouldn’t let them free, especially with only one hostage and held up in an office.
Molly: When the military stormed the building, a grenade had caught my legs…
She was sobbing in my shirt now, unable to continue her story. With that much to unload, I felt helpless, but to hold her.
That’s why she was sleepless when we fought over the letter. Why she was able to sleep when I was there that night we spent together. Why she stares off into space during classes, why she seems less aloof when I’m around.
Molly: I hate to be cold with you, but you asked for the facts. Here they are.
Molly: Sometimes, I think why my father sent me to Yamaku. Probably to relate to the others, probably because the pains still kill me after all these years.
Molly: Sometimes, I still feel like I'm still not home yet. Like I'm still drifting about the world...