Sunflower Mama
Petal 12 - Endless, Eternal Field
by StarCross
It could be the worst murder, and it could be the worst terrorist incident the country had ever faced, even if only two were killed. And it just so happened they were two very important and very dear people.
It was horrific. Their bodies couldn't even be identified in the liquefied mess of blood, bones, muscle, teeth, and other internal organs. The dreaded news of reached the doorstep of the Nikkô doorstep, the closest contacts the police and Interpol could ever think of.
Eventually, they caught the perpetrator at a rural town, a former mob enforcer of the Nikkô Group dismissed by its current boss, Minoru. Minoru, pleaded his innocence, which was proven true. The man was eventually sentenced to death without parole.
The train attendant, the sole witness in the case, after recovering from her wounds, did identify the criminal as one the who brought the bomb, but in later years she began to disclose to her close friends and family in private that it might be the wrong man. It was hard to tell since he wore a cap and sunglasses.
After the sentencing, Yoshiro, Ken'ichi, Michi, and Kenji returned to their home to mourn instead of venting their anger at the criminal, while Kazuko had spent almost an entire month with Sumiko in order to recover from her sadness. Not wanting to see her girlfriend suffer, she pressed her older brothers, father, and uncles to enact some kind of change and crackdown on organized crime and domestic terrorism. As she resumed school, she devoted her time to catch more criminals, thus finally accepting her destiny and role as a policeman's daughter.
Sumiko eventually graduated at the top of her class in college and at the academy, and rapidly ascended in becoming the first openly lesbian detective in the entire force, but the condition to be employed would mean that she had to wear a man's clothes when on duty and permanently adopt a male given male name. Sumiko became Susumu Kanno, and took Kazuko as her wife and homemaker. They adopted two children, one boy named Reito and one girl named Sumiko, both of whom were orphaned from the effects of crime.
Susumu not only proved herself worthy, she revamped the entire nation's police force and undid all the corruption both subversive and glaring. In no time, she destroyed the Nikkô Group and the Kurobara Gang. Minoru Nikkô was arrested, and with his empire gone he committed suicide during his life imprisonment.
However, there was no evidence linking him to the deaths of Rei and Ichiko, and Susumu never expected to find any. In fact, there was no evidence of him of distributing flyers at the Sunflower Academy, and evidence otherwise turned out to be craftily planted.
In the years of relative peace, an instigating investigative reporter of skeptics show reopened the Sunflower Case, the event of Rei and Ichiko's murder. The reporter interviewed Susumu, and presented her with evidence that the bones and organs that was supposed to be the victims' remains turned out to be fresh from recently deceased cadavers. Susumu blasted back at the rude reporter for suggesting that Rei and Ichiko would falsify the death by dissecting a cadaver, if not murdering two women similar to their ages.
The reporter had no evidence of missing organs, as it seemed to be missing, or had not existed at all. He then asked Susumu if he could see the coroner's report, and she allowed him without hesitation. There was nothing suspicious.
After that, the Sunflower Case was never brought up again. Many years then passed. Yoshiro and Michi passed away, the former from lung cancer and the latter from old age, for Michi was already many years older than her husband. The flower shop was bequeathed to equal control of Tsumi, Lala, and Koko, but none of them had the heart to continue its operation without their employer and Frankie. The shop closed down, and was eventually bought up to be turned back into a convenience store. Eventually, the three former prostitutes passed away, but they were not alone when they did. Two at least married and had children. One of them lived with one of them as surrogate sister.
Kenji followed in his father's footsteps in becoming a lawyer, but mainly for clients for the entertainment sector. That way, he would always have access to media such as anime, which would allow him to have access to fond memories from what he learned was her stepsister. He eventually married and had one handsome son named Ichiro.
His father Ken'ichi had an untimely death due to an auto accident. During the funeral ceremony, he sought out his son amongst the conversing crowd at the house that became his. He went outside and found Ichiro speaking to and laughing with two very tall women of very similar height garbed in long black coats with yellow highlights. One of them had short hair whereas the other had long black hair.
"Kenji!" yelled Rin. "Have you seen Ichiro?"
For a moment, Rin grabbed her attention enough to lose sight of the two women and his son.
"No, I haven't," he said. Kenji ran in the house and headed upstairs. Ichiro's door was left ajar, and the father entered to see his son napping on his bed.
Ichiro's room happened to be Ichiko's former room. Kenji never discussed with his son about the two mysterious women he talked with. Those two elicited feelings of nostalgia, yet serious uneasiness. It was as if he was touched by ghosts.
Rin would eventually pass away in ten years later. Even after that time, Kenji anticipated seeing those two women, but they never came. However in the years that passed, he and his family would visit his parents' graves, and when they would arrive there would always be sunflowers laid out on them.
Susumu and Kazuko's son became a police chief, and their daughter was wedded to a humble male office worker. During their daughter's wedding celebration, Kazuko saw her speaking with two tall women garbed in black outside at the balcony of the hotel. Then she proceeded to dance with the one with long black hair. Two bellboys towing filled luggage carts passed by obscuring her view for just a moment. Then she saw the balcony empty.
"Mother?" asked Sumiko.
Kazuko's heart leapt, for Sumiko had suddenly appeared right behind her. "What are you doing with those two women?"
Sumiko winked and crossed her index finger lipline. "It's a secret." The new bride then skipped over to kiss her new husband.
Then, many years later, right before Susumu and Kazuko's 50th anniversary party a strange large bouquet of sunflowers was delivered to their house (this was Susumu's house by the way that she inherited from her parents). The two women put the bouquet in their largest vase that was then set at the dinner table, and sat at its sides contemplating on who would send such a thing. The greeting card was of no help, for all it said it was from the Sunflower Secret.
"Is this some kind of joke?" Kazuko asked.
Susumu smiled. "Hard to say really."
"You know something, do you?"
"I wish, though."
In her advanced years, the retired Susumu became a widow. Looking after grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren occupied her time in addition to giving the occasional lecture at the academy and participating in weekend workouts with the elderly. It was there that she met an aged Kenji, also widowed, and the two became friends.
Their connection was made tighter when they went out to a café one weekend where they exchanged stories of an unknown charitable stranger leaving sunflowers on the grave memorials for their loved ones, particularly Kenji's parents and grandparents and Susumu's late wife.
"So even you have no idea who left them?" asked Susumu.
Kenji shook his head. "It does remind me of a certain incident though."
"Oh?"
"I have never told anyone until now. I got lost one day in my class field trip up north during the time my sister was living with her real mother. I inadvertently wandered into this so-called red-light district. Actually, the town we were in was very peaceful, so it was hard to tell if you wandered into such a place. Anyway, the sun was going down, and I was frantically looking for the hotel we were staying in. There was this love hotel literally named Love Hotel. I mean, the sign was right in front of my eyes. After I passed by it, a motorcycle pulled up carrying its driver, a very tall woman with long black hair, and a high school girl with short black hair. They left their bike right there, and as they approached the entrance they were hugging and fondling. Not in a platonic friendly sense, but when I think back they were fondling each other's breasts and the crotches."
"What happened after that?"
"My teacher found me and I was taken back to the hotel."
Susumu just smiled.
"Is something funny?" Kenji asked.
"Not really. It's just that it was amusing that they were in love, and even now I feel it was apparently obvious."
"Well, I am not sure if it was them though. It was such a long time."
"Even I am starting to forget."
"Yeah."
The old woman and old man stared at their teacups, which were now almost empty.
"You think they'll lay sunflowers for us at our graves?" Kenji asked.
"I'm sure of it," replied Susumu.
Her prediction came true years later.
The truth was, the Sunflower in the girl did not really die. Rather, its remains gave birth to an endless and eternal field.
Somewhere in the world nestled between mountains, there was that field, but it wasn't exactly endless and eternal. It was expansive and healthy in that deaths and rebirths were carefully balanced. In the middle was large house and large barn. The house was both an orphanage ran solely by two very tall lesbian women who were model citizens of the nearby town and idolized in their province and country.
They accepted children from many races and backgrounds, and made them their own. Stringent education granted intelligence unparalleled to any prestigious school, and their hidden talents and abilities were unleashed at the same time. The orphanage churned out many children into the world stage who became leaders in their own right. They might have acted independent, but their motives were solely instilled by the youngest of the lesbian couple who desired a perfect world.
Sometimes, some children could not be adopted into external families. It wasn't that they weren't wanted. Rather, they loved their parents so much that they stayed to run the daily affairs of home, farm, and the field.
While they were universally loved, they were universally feared in the criminal underworld. The couple rejected all claims that they were the shadow queens of the world that had a knack of bringing countries and corporate conglomerations to their knees in less than one year. For some of the larger and more powerful countries, it took just about two years. Tales of the Sunflower Empress and her lover the Sunflower Princess were widespread. No one knew how they acted, and no one knew their true identity. If one were to see a single stem of sunflower on their doorstep, doom was imminent.
Regardless, the Sunflower Orphanage operated without a single incident. Eventually though, the couple who started the program desired to live out their lives alone in the house in their old age.
Ideals could last forever, but the couple's bodies could not. The older of them, already well past one hundred years of age, suffered from pneumonia and decided to sleep in early for the day. Neither of them was sad, as they had anticipated all this.
"I will join you soon after," said the younger one.
"Don't take too long," said the older one. She closed her eyes and exhaled for the last time. The younger one then crawled into her side of the bed and closed her eyes. She died hours later.
Their only living beneficiaries were two of their eldest grandchildren, one man and one woman, came back with their respective families after they each received a text message from the local priest that the smoke at the Sunflower Orphanage chimney had stopped operating. They found their adoptive grandparents content and in peace.
They encountered memories and artifacts in the couple's personal office and storage rooms, some of which included a libelous flyer, a receipt for a print shop, and a newspaper clipping during the infamous Sunflower Case. The eldest grandchild then found a safe, and opened it up using the number combination his grandparents gave him after their last adopted child passed away.
It opened, and spilling out were numerous documents of genetic test results. He skimmed through them, and almost gasped.
"What did you find?" asked the second eldest grandchild.
"We have to burn these," said the first.
The second nodded without incident. Along with the documents, many other things were burned.
As per their will, the couples' remains were cremated, and their ashes were distributed about the cropland. A quick funeral ceremony immediately held after with only the two eldest grandchildren and their families in attendance. In addition, a stone memorial was erected for their honor in front of the house. The house, the farm, and the land were now a nature preserve.
Almost as if humans were wiped out, nature eventually destroyed the house and farm through two strong twin trees almost a century later. The field was now wild, but there was still peace. A sunflower field grew around the crumbling memorial.
The couple was still alive somehow, somewhere, and with their ideals spread across not only the planet, but also the entire universe. Way before then however, they had to willingly relinquish the world in order to gain it back in spades. How they rose into such insurmountable legendary power though... that was another story.
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