If all had gone to plan, today I would have been 37.  By now, I should have had a child or two, and be going back to school to finally get the degree I’d skipped to go into nursing.

By now, Johann was supposed to be a successful practitioner with a good amount of savings.  We’d be spending family vacations around Europe, we’d have a beautiful home…

And, most of all, we’d both be alive.

But, of course, things didn’t exactly turn out.

For some strange reason, Johann was apparently the only one with a passport.  While the children try to think through how they are to sneak back to Japan with no documentation and basically no money, we’re forced to sit in this cheap hotel room.

Across the room, Johann eats the cheap cup noodles to which he’s become accustomed.  He’s watching the American news –though whether he can make up nor down from it is questionable.  It’s been so long since he’s had English lessons, after all, and the reporter is speaking so quickly…

Still, he watches.

If we had been on our own, we could have been back in Germany at this point.  Yes, we’d probably be in a hotel like this until our affairs were in order enough to buy a home.  But, at the least, the reporters would be saying things we could understand.

The other night I asked him why it was that we didn’t just leave and go back.  His obligations to these children were fulfilled, after all, and it would be so nice to get our lives back.  Or, rather, as close to our lives as we could get anymore.

As politely as he possibly can, he dodges my question.

Johann had spent a good deal of time talking with every other necromancer he could find in Patch.  He would grill them for hours until he knew all that they did, and then tell me excitedly how much closer he was to finding a way to reincarnate me.

I think he’s nearly there, because he tells me nightly how we’ll have a family.  He alludes to the idea that we’ll raise the child in Japan as he opens a practice under the Funbari Onsen.

He never says it directly, but I know that he’s already made the decision.  No matter how much I ask him about his parents, my parents, the state of politics and medicine, he’s firmly decided that we won’t go back.

I’m sure he’s done something there, but still.

Germany is such a beautiful country… and, quite frankly, it’s quite large enough for someone to disappear in forever and have a reasonable life.

But he has a strange loyalty to Anna, to Yoh, which up to this point he’s never had toward anything but medicine and myself.  While it is healthy, I know, for him to have friends for once –and to stay with them…

I’m not so sure.

My Japanese is not as strong as I would like it to be, though I am trying.  I can only understand bits of what they’re saying, and my own version is childish and broken.  Even so, I can tell enough.

They’re violent, they’re cynical, and they’re continuing to keep him acting in ways which are completely unhealthy and out of character.

He adores them because, after a lifetime of isolation, they speak to him.  But this exuberance is blinding him from the truth of the matter.

They barely speak to him, really, and are quite happy to leave without his knowledge.

They would be upset at their loss of a doctor… but they wouldn’t mourn his personality because they don’t know it.

They don’t care that he adores singing and science fiction novels.  They don’t care about his stories of childhood and medical school.  They don’t care that he’s clever and a quick wit, or that he’s one of the sweetest men they could ever hope to meet.

All they see is a burnt-out drug addict –who had been incredible at one point but was now just a depressed seat filler and an adequate defensive line.

He simply doesn’t understand when I tell them this.  Or, probably more realistically, he pretends as if he doesn’t.

It may take a week or so before the group can sneak out of the country.  Until then, he’ll keep eating cup noodles and watching news he barely understands.

One day, I’ll probably have a child I can’t communicate with, and raise it in some tiny room we rent from Anna.

Germany, my beloved Germany, will be vacations at the most.

He’s asking me to come sit with him, so I should end for now.  I’ll make the attempt to get back later, though I’m not sure if I will be able.