7. In Place of a Mother

He didn’t think that the girl would go back to the lakeside cottage. Just as it happened during the second visit, when he saw the peaceful expression on his father operating the crane, Amuro felt he could leave things in the hands of the junk shop owner, and so he found himself back at the cottage and there she was.

Unlike when it was raining, she wasn’t under the veranda, instead sitting on a bench amidst the reeds some forty paces from the lake.   

“Really, um…thank you very much for yesterday.” He was ashamed of himself for being unable to thank her properly, so he said it now.

“That’s good.” 

He didn’t actually hear Lalah say those words, but that was how her lips seemed to move, so Amuro moved closer to the bench. He realized that her presence here was having a restorative effect on his self-esteem.

“…Oh?”

A swan, different from the one the other day, had drifted from the lake into a slightly sunken inlet, and her attention was focused on it. Crossing from behind her right shoulder to her left, Amuro’s heart suddenly began to beat heavily, and the tightness in his chest caused him to panic. Unless he stayed focused on his throat, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. That’s what it felt like. 

The brown of her scalp, poking out from where her hair was parted in the center, looked just slightly lighter, and the thought that perhaps that was the same color as the inside of her left him feeling even more awestruck. His entire body trembled and his legs wobbled. The color of her nape and shoulders, framed by her lustrous blue-black hair, made him imagine the richness of the flesh that extended down below her abdomen, and her loose, mugwort-colored dress gave him a top down view of the slope of her arms, from shoulder to wrist. The beguiling sight was a shot to his nervous system, and he dropped himself noisily down onto the bench.   

It was then that she looked at him.

“…Uh, it sure is hot…”

“…” Lalah didn’t say anything and returned to watching the swan lazing in the creek. It seemed that she was nervous too, and Amuro was overcome with the urge to continue talking.

And so.

“How did you know that I was your enemy?” He asked.

“What…? Did I ever say that about you?” Her already wide eyes opened even wider at Amuro’s abrupt words. 

“Huh!?” Her eyes were so terribly clear that looking into them really did take Amuro’s breath away. He was unable to inhale, or do anything else for that matter. 

Lightly craning her neck, she let out a laugh. She covered her mouth with one hand as she did, so she definitely wasn’t ill-mannered. That her reflexes had caused her to laugh out loud struck Amuro as emotionally healthy, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes, and his gaze drifted from the lake to his lap. 

“!!!” He realized that it was only at times like now that he’d be able to get an eyeful of that brown, relaxed neck, the area from the throat to the jaw where the skin was softest, that mouth full of white teeth, and so forth. And yet, here he was staring only at his own fists, streaked black with machine oil, and his gray pants, stained with grease and flecks of spilled food. 

He was completely outclassed by her wholesomeness.  

“…” 

The undulation of her laughter dipped, so Amuro raised his eyes, looking to the copse on the opposite shore across from this reed thicket. There were no signs of other people, and…there weren’t any swans, either. Scanning across from the right, from the inlet to the larger lake, there wasn’t a single splash. Cylinder-type space colonies spun in order to generate inertial gravity, but the still lake on this colony’s inner wall was the evidence that the cylinder, three kilometers in diameter, was rotating in a perfect circle. On top of that, the fact that this rotation had already been going on for nearly a century was a testament to the performance of these enormous man-made structures. 

As the wind blew over the water, small ripples would run across the surface. 

It’s just the two of us, so even if she insults me I can put up with it. That was the thought that appeared and connected inside his soaring consciousness. Take your fists off the top of your knees and unclench them. Use your right hand to straighten out a lock of curly hair, and roll it between your fingertips. It was a habit that he would slip into when deep in thought, but right now he was doing it consciously, in order to regain his composure. His emotions were heavy and jumbled. Regret over meeting each other again, but happiness that they had. 

Still, he could tell from her straightforward laughter that she wasn’t making fun of him, so he didn’t get up. At any rate, as long as she was sitting on this bench they could stay connected. He was aware that there was something that felt like an awfully raw craving within that thought, and so his body stiffened, but nothing else came to mind.    

“When was it that I felt that?” Lalah extended a helping hand towards Amuro’s hesitation, and something clicked between them. 

“It was here…um, you said ‘Poor thing,’ right? …I’m pretty sure you were talking about that swan, but I also felt that it could have been about me…I wondered what kind of person would say that to me and I looked to the veranda, and then you clearly knew I was your enemy and froze up, right?”

“I see…” As Amuro answered, Lalah received his self-loathing over the fact that whenever he spoke he always ended up rambling on for too long. “However, that’s not how it was at first. You came up with that story later. You started thinking that as you were putting all of your feelings in order.” 

“Maybe so, but I’m sure that’s how it was when I stepped onto the porch.” 

“…I wonder. If that’s true, then that means men are the enemies of women.”

“Hah?” It was such a worldly thing to say that it caused him to gasp audibly, and he twisted his upper body to face her. However, he realized that this meant he was going to end up exhaling on her, so he looked forward again in a hurry. As he did there was a pop in his hips, followed by a twinge in his side. 

“Mrm!!! *Cough-cough*” Sputtering, Amuro touched one hand to his oblique. 

“Is something wrong?”

“I, uh, think I might’ve pulled something…”  

“Around here?” Sliding closer, Lalah used her palm to rub Amuro’s back and side. The sudden gesture sent a shiver through his entire body. He could feel the warmth of her hand enveloping him. 

It was a moment of bliss. 

Thanks to the sense of security he got from entrusting himself to Lalah, Amuro forgot all about his vulgar feelings towards her, and the sensation brought out a memory that had been buried even deeper.

The smell of his mother! 

The memories that he had so desperately tried to forget; the reality which he had attempted to put behind him. 

Amuro reunited with his mother the month before last, when he went back to Earth. The Trojan Horse had made an emergency landing near his hometown, and after hearing news of her Amuro found his mother in a war refugee camp under Zeon control.   

However, there was an incident.

Amuro killed a man. 

In order to escape a search from a guard, Amuro ended up drawing his concealed pistol and firing. An act of wartime self-defense. After witnessing the whole thing, his mother berated him. 

Even that soldier had a wife and children! I don’t remember ever raising you like that! 

Things like that.

She didn’t even consider the fact that her son could have gotten killed. That’s why Amuro fled. As he ran, he could still hear her shouting at his back.

What a shameful boy! 

Shameful boy!

Shameful!

Shame!

Even if he hated his mother, Amuro couldn’t reject her.   

Even if it was only for a moment, the feeling of a mother’s touch, a hand against his shoulder, brought him comfort. He found the memory ingrained into his body to be nostalgic, and he thought it was pathetic. 

To bring that kind of strife into more vivid detail, Amuro, moving from childhood into adolescence into adulthood, would be physically and mentally aroused by feeling the skin and heat that accompanied the touch of a woman who wasn’t his mother. In doing so, the child gains the opportunity to part from his parent.

“My body’s getting dull, since I haven’t been doing anything since arriving.”

“That’s right…here on this independent side we can’t even tidy our ship.”

When Lalah removed her hand he felt cold, and the remaining emptiness grew into an enormous void. That’s why Amuro blurted out, “But you know, it’s because of that I was able to meet someone like you, like this, and so I’m really happy.”

“…Why do you feel that way?”

“I know that you’re Lalah Sune, and I never would have thought that you’d be waiting here for someone like me.”

Lalah stared at the lake. Amuro immediately regretted saying too much.

“Sorry…I didn’t mean to sound full of myself. That’s just how the situation happened to look to me, and I got too excited.”

“It’s alright. You’re the only one who’s ever taken an interest in me without knowing about my past…”

“Even though I could be your enemy?”

“It’s because you’re in that kind of position that this is possible.” 

“But I’m willing to ignore all of that. Because…I really like…” He couldn’t bring himself to add a direct object to that sentence.

“Thank you. But if you learned about my past, you would surely hate me.” Lalah brought up the same thing again.

“I wouldn’t. Maybe you were impoverished and pitiable, maybe you were so wealthy that it made other people jealous…either way, even if you’ve had misfortune in your past, that’s none of my business going forward.”

“Are you all talk, Mr. Amuro Ray?”

“I expect I’ll be tested, but it won’t change my feelings.” 

Lalah’s emerald green eyes quickly locked onto him. She pressed her petite breasts against Amuro’s right arm, as if she was going to embrace him, and placed her lips against his ear.

“Yesterday, the type of woman your intuition showed you…that is exactly what I am.” 

{A prostitute!}

It was a direct blow to his consciousness.

“But, you’re with a good man now, right? That’s the bigger issue, so I won’t ask about your past. There’s no reason to.” At that moment, there was clarity in Amuro’s voice.

“The problem is that the Colonel is your enemy…”

“Yes. I do like the Colonel. But he is absolutely my enemy. That’s what’s more important. I want to beat him.”

“That makes me happy to hear. Amuro Ray…I thought you were just a child, but…I’m not trying to compare you against the Colonel, but he really is a good person.”

Her words rankled him, which is why he said what came next.

“…He’s the man who led the surprise attack on my home in Side 7.”

“I know. During atmospheric reentry the Colonel had a difficult time against a white mobile suit. You were its pilot, weren’t you?”

“…That’s right.” 

“In that case, you did a marvelous job fighting with him.”

“It’s okay for us to fight each other, is what you’re saying.”

“I might be the sort of woman I am, but I won’t compare you two. Both you and the Colonel are equally good people.”