[ Posted 17 Aug | 122k likes | 60k boosts | share | report ]

A girl with hair like wisteria in bloom sits before a bathtub, hands resting on her knees.

“I wonder if I would have been better if I didn’t admit I had a problem. If I had the willpower to never have tried the pills, hit myself and say the things I did that made me want to do it all again. If I kept them in and… found another way. Would it have been another way to get the badness out? Probably not. It would have made things worse.

“I just keep thinking about how my life could have been different, but it doesn’t help. The reality is I’m already getting as good as I can - but for some reason, no matter how much I know this, I can’t shake the sadness. It’s like a disease. Or maybe it’s tiredness. Laziness. I’m so lucky, but I’m greedy. I’m monstrously… ungrateful. Problem is I’ve taken so much and I’ll end up sucking the life out of everyone who cares if I keep trying, trying to… get better. Dad doesn’t deserve that.

“That’s how I know the world will be better without me in it.”

Above her head, a shadow in the shape of a ring sways, slicing over the tiles and her face and back, like an enormous pendulum.

–

It’s a beautiful day, Sao lied to Jasmine’s parents who met him and Rai at the door. True, it was a few indistinguishable degrees cooler than yesterday, but humidity was up. Rai and the couple gave him sweaty, concerned glances.

Perhaps a lie was not the best way to start what was to be a grim conversation.

“We knew she was hurting. It had been a long time, but we always knew there was a possibility those feelings would come back. We always could have tried harder…”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sao said.

“People keep telling us that. It doesn’t matter, though.” Jasmine’s father pulled the hands of his wife to him like a security blanket. The woman had dark hair, and was very pretty - and looked nearly as young as Jasmine. Sao almost mistook her for a sister or cousin when they first entered. But there was a mature dignity in her eyes; she was stock-still as her pale husband spoke, serving as an anchor. “What makes me really upset is when I see - not even in the context of Jasmine - when I see people say suicide is selfish, cowardly, senseless. Ungrateful, that’s another word. They say it’s the fault of the one who suffered most, somehow. That’s nonsense. It wasn’t her fault at all.”

Sao nodded. Stuffed between peach-coloured cushions on the couch, Rai looked sour.

The house where Jasmine had lived with her father and stepmother was a pleasant two-storey cottage awash with color. Like Rai, they had sheer curtains over the windows and kept the place cool, but each room was a different misty floral shade. Mint green in the entryway, blue in the kitchen, dusty pink in the living room (to match the couch). The effect was dreamlike; Sao felt he were floating through a sea of pastel clouds. Despite knowing someone had died in one of these rooms, the effect was quite soothing.

An effect lost on Rai. He’d been surly since they’d arrived. The father tried to hand him a framed photo of Jasmine when they sat down but Rai was fixated on the carpet; Sao had taken the offering instead. Sao watched Rai, gloved fingers tightly clenched, twitching whenever Jasmine’s name was spoken. He was alert, at least.

Bundled in his dark jacket and gloves among delicate florals, perhaps he felt out of place.

“So your daughter had attempted suicide in the past?” Rai said, more statement than a question.

Mr and Mrs M___ gave simultaneous, tiny nods. Again, the grieving father spoke. “The dark thoughts started when she was twelve. She told me - she’d learned about depression and anxiety from health class at school. She’d always been quiet, but honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. She was always a smart cookie, too - of course she’d be the one to notice. You know what she said, just minutes after bringing up the topic?”

“Yes?” Sao prompted.

“She said I might have lingering sadness myself, after mom died - my first wife. That we should get help together.”

Rai’s eyes slid to the young wife - Sao cut him off before he could sink his teeth into her. “She sounded like a wonderful daughter.”

“She wasn’t just talk, either. She looked up clinics and scheduled the appointments by herself. I didn’t pitch in until… the first time. Middle school exams, she became very stressed - she had trouble sleeping or relaxing and tried swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills.” His hands tightened around his wife’s. “I was home at that time. I found her in her room, took her to hospital. From then on, I knew I had to try harder. It wasn’t enough…”

“She got worse?” Rai asked.

“No, not… from what I saw. She was smart, like I said, and resilient. She bounced back very quickly; started exercising regularly - she tried gymnastics, cycling, rollerblading... She was planning meals, and doing mindfulness courses - every night, stretching and breathing along with those online videos. There was the medication too, how could I — she was very good about the medication. She also started really working on her art. She wanted to become a children’s book illustrator or a designer, she was on a break year to build a portfolio and really look at colleges. And I think she needed rest—”

“Did you know much about her Neocam career? Watch any of broadcasts, meet any of her online friends?”

“I’ll admit I never figured out how to use the website. She did show us some of her work, though, her drawings and some videos while she was working on them. One of so many things I wish I’d tried to know sooner. We’ve been asking for an archive of her videos from the website owners, for memorializing…”

Rai held out his phone with one of the photographs taken from Jasmine’s profile, of Orchid, Jasmine, Hazel and Maya at the restaurant. “Do you recognize any of these people with your daughter?”

Sao presented an image of Sapphire, from Hazel’s profile.

The couple inspected the images closely and, Sao thought, seemed closer to tears than ever. The father swallowed. “She was out with friends a lot more - I assumed she meant school friends. They look a little older…” He paused. “What Jasmine did… do you think they knew she was planning? Did they know how she felt? Or…”

“We’re going over as many people as we can in this apparent friend circle. It’s for a related case.”

“This girl, the one with the black makeup - isn’t she Hazel?” the stepmother said softly.

“You’ve met her?”

The father studied Hazel’s pinched, charcoal-eyed face. “I don’t recall seeing her, but Jasmine did mention a friend by that name. I thought Hazel was a classmate, the way she talked about her. Who is she really?”

“I’d like to hear what you know about her first,” Rai said.

“Hazel did come by, once,” the stepmother went on, in her thin, gentle tone. “It was earlier this year - when the weather was still cold. March, maybe. I was coming in, when she was on her way out. Jasmine introduced her by name and Hazel stormed — um, rushed off. What I thought immediately was, well…”

“Yeah?” Rai asked. A touch too callous, Sao thought, but the woman fixed him with a look, as if he’d broken her from some trance, and continued.

“I thought Hazel looked deeply unpleasant - no, I suppose the truth is she was unhappy. When she left she didn’t say goodbye, just slammed the door. Jasmine wasn’t upset. She later told me she wanted to help Hazel and felt terrible for her; she told me Hazel had a miserable home life and couldn’t get support when she needed it, like Jas was able to. It seemed like she admired Hazel too - that only drove her to want to help her friend all the more.”

Rai, ever the gentleman, quickly put in, “Did she tell you that Hazel took her own life?”

It was like he’d just set a grenade on the table. “She… what?”

“Five days before Jasmine did. Hazel was an internet streamer too.”

“No, no. Oh god, if I had known…” The woman let her husband’s hands free so she could cover her face. “We never should have left her by herself. Not that night, not ever. If she were still here, I’d never let her out of my sight for the rest of my--”

The man made a few throaty noises, but no words came. He looked frantically from Rai to Sao. Rai looked away.

“You and Jasmine were close,” Sao said to the inconsolable woman, hoping he didn’t sound too surprised.

“She was upset about me marrying again,” the father said. “I know that’s one reason why she was stressed during the start of her senior year, but I thought we’d beat that.”

His wife patted his arm. “I know - I know how it looks. The young stepmother and the teenage daughter. There may very well have been things I didn’t see, but - Jasmine tried to be transparent. She let me know that I didn’t make her comfortable, but that she was willing to give me a chance. And she did. I know I could never be a mother to her, even come close to replacing her mother but… she was like a sister to me. I thought we were…”

Her husband managed to untangle his vocal chords. “She didn’t tell me, either. Or I didn’t listen, that could easily have been the case. I was such an idiot about everything.”

Rai stood abruptly, toppling a pair of pink cushions. “Sorry, one more question. Did Jasmine know any magic?”

—

Jasmine may not have been educated in any sort of magic, but she’d made her room an enchanting refuge in purples and periwinkle blues. The bed was inhabited with several plush creatures of ambiguous species, in a range of cool shades. Over a puffed landscape of her unmade blanket, cotton fauna peered out, waiting to pounce, surprising their owner upon her return.

Rai bumped against the door which had been hand-painted by its owner; pale pink roses nestled among whorls of ivy. “Well, I fucked up that interview pretty good.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Sao said, lowering Jasmine’s sketchbook, a trove of photorealistic flower studies. “Their daughter died less than a week ago. They were already fragile, if not still actively mourning.” He perused the bookshelf in which he’d found it. Half of the space was taken up by sketchbooks. The rest were mostly comics. Sao pulled out one stubby volume and was greeted by a golden-haired man, drizzled in light, spread in a rather sensual pose over a pommel horse. Another cover showed a handsome rollerblader. Sao smiled. “Quite the self-motivated young lady. Looking at these almost have me wanting to pursue a fitter lifestyle.”

There was no way Rai could resist taking a jab at him for that. Only, Rai didn’t seem to have heard.

“I feel bad because I don’t think they were lying or anything. And I think they really do feel like shit about what happened to Jasmine.”

Sao set the bookshelf back in order. “Were you expecting otherwise?”

Reluctantly raising his eyes to survey the room, Rai sighed and made for the computer setup. “I guess so. You hear someone was down enough to kill themselves, you consider the worst. But depression is a bitch, it’s not always that easy to nail down reasons for it.” Jasmine had a large drawing tablet propped in front of her desktop computer. Rai tapped it; it stayed dark. “What did you think?”

“I’m no psychologist. But I was somewhat taken aback by the parents’ frankness. I suppose I have my own preconceived notions of what a stressful home situation looks like.”

There was silence. He knew Rai wouldn’t ask - Rai never pressed too hard when it came to Sao’s family life. Not since Sao had implied it was a topic he’d rather not touch himself. Suddenly, he felt rather sorry for bringing it up at all.

While the room's harmonious colors gave the immediate illusion of cool, the stuffiness was becoming hard to ignore. The air was thick with dust, and Sao felt a strange pressure, as if the space were trying to hold everything in place until Jasmine walked back in. Vaguely suffocating.

Rai’s mood was getting the better of both of them.

“It sounds like it was Hazel who had a bad time at home. We’re dropping by her folks’ next.” Rai prodded at what looked like a closet. When the door opened, he recoiled slightly. “It’s the bathroom. This is where it happened. We… don’t have to go in.”

“I’ll take a quick look.” Sao entered. It was easier to breathe, with air flowing through a ventilation fan, but the room was disappointingly bare, and the tiles colorless. The mirror swung aside to reveal a medicine cabinet. There were a number of pills in orange tubes alongside painkillers and allergy medicine in generic packaging. As he was turning them around, a ballpoint pen rolled out, dropping into the sink with a clatter.

Sao placed it back and closed the cupboard. He returned to the bedroom.

“She was lucky. Not just because she had her own en-suite bathroom,” Rai said. He was looking at the window, having another faceoff with the raging afternoon sun. “Her parents supported her. They’re both reputable wealth managers - they could afford whatever she wanted. Depression can make a person cynical but it definitely helps to be living in a home that covers, hell, even defies your shit expectations. Her dad’s hot new wife was willing to help, despite Jasmine telling her she wasn’t welcome...”

“Isn’t it awful how we come to expect stepmothers to be uncaring?” From one of the shelves set in the desk, Sao spotted a pile of thin purple notebooks. Pulling them out, he soon found what he’d been expecting - a list of addresses, dates and prescriptions in Jasmine’s handwriting, a bubbly, confident print.

Rai was treading circles on the carpet. “I’ll admit, it was the age gap that threw me off. But what the hell am I allowed to think about that? My mom and dad had - what - a 200 year difference? Of course, I never got to see them together except-”

“Rai.”

“Sorry.” Rai came out of his thoughts as if a switch had been flipped. “Huh, another…? Let me see that.”

“I imagine keeping track of one’s progress isn’t uncommon, but the format is virtually identical to Orchid’s little notebook. Perhaps they were doing this as a group effort. Or maybe they met at some sort of group therapy.”

“Let’s ask the parents if we can take these notes for investigation.” Rai freed one finger from his gloves so he could tap his phone screen. Checking the time, his face reacquired its normal, disgruntled expression. Sao breathed what he hoped was a subtle sigh of relief.

Tugging the glove back over his hand, Rai went on. “A starting point for when we look through the next girl’s place.”