26 Chapter three, 2016, beginnings: 1 (1/2)

Home is the place where you happen to live.

That was always the case for Christina. Wherever she lived, and living was being alone. It was, for lack of a better word, practical. Home was clean, because home never stayed the same for very long. For as long as she could remember she had been on the move. First with her parents moving from job to job like a grazing herd, and then she on her own.

From seventeen to fifty. Three years behind the same door was the longest she could recall being in one place. This small room in a different world was maybe less grand than most of the places she had called home, but it was really no better or worse than most of them.

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Home is where you grow up.

She was born here. Literally. In the bathroom. Kyoko hadn't known any other place than this one. Within walking distance from both school and cram school. Within walking distance from her old middle school, grade school and elementary school. Within walking distance from her entire life.

Home is where you learn to behave as is proper. Where your parents live proper lives. Home is furnished according to your family's status, is of the proper size for a public servant family and is situated where other families of equal status are likely to be found. Home is – proper.

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Home is family.

It doesn't really matter where you live as long as your family is there. Maybe they had moved a couple of times, but the Wakayamas had always stayed together. And they always stood together. Four of them, like the four walls of what others called home.

The latest building that others named their home had seen them playing out their merry antics the last five years. It was, Ryu gloated and Noriko admitted, large. Abundantly so. Both their parents worked, and they were, mildly put, well off.