a photograph in tokyo…

a simple photograph arrives, ping, ping, on a woman’s phone in a cafe adjacent to the pilates studio where she has spent the late morning on Tuesday in Tokyo.Asaikusabashi. Hasimon is sitting with her niece and her bodyguard, she persists in thinking of him as her bodyguard even though she knows her niece and the slightly younger man have been sleeping, living together for sometime. She is slightly amused that nobody dares say anything about their relationship. Even her husband is aware that her niece and her bodyguards are best left alone. A trinary system, one third of whom is being waited for. Besides she likes the way they look so comfortable together on her sofa usually just before they fall asleep, she thinks of them as Android refugees from a pre-apocalyptic web toon. Ping, ping, ping. She picks up her phone and looks at the imessage, its from an unrecognized overseas phone number. She opens the photograph, half listening to her niece looking up from her pad and saying “Sik, we are going to have to go to london to see the hedge fund people about the profit reinvestment, accounting and taxation as soon as possible…” Sik is writing notes in his black notebook, whilst looking at dates in his techno diary. “I’ll check to see if next week or the week after, is better.” She looks at the photo, It’s a picture of a tired looking woman sitting in a hospital gown, pajamas really, a newborn baby in her arms, smiling. A tired looking man standing next to her, also smiling, dressed in a dark grey tee-shirt with a red star on the left side. They both looking happy. On the other side of the woman there is a young woman wearing glasses, a long sleeved teeshirt and leggings over flat soled black boots, her left leg has a support around her knee. She is looking down at the baby with a smile on her face. She looks like she is laughing. Too the left of the woman the edge of the hospital bed can be seen. There is a placard that says “Support the NHS” on the wall behind them. She has been looking at the photo for a few seconds, ten or even twenty perhaps before she realizes that the woman with the baby in her arms is her exiled daughter. A deep inhalation of breath. “What is it ? “her niëce asks. She hands her phone, the photograph to her. “I have become a grandmother” she pauses, looking at her niece. “ My psychopathic daughter has had a baby. Who is that woman with her?” She in turn hands the phone.photo to her boyfriend/bodyguard who studies it intently. “… That is Osaka, she has changed her name, we are sure she is now registered as Park’s sister or daughter. Either way the four people in the photo are a family. I think the photo will have been taken by Nancy, who is her PA and also a police spy who works for his, her husband’s boss. He is the father. “ He smiles apologetically, aware that he may have said more than she needed to hear. She looks at him thinking that she can see why her niece likes him. “Thank you. I’m in shock. I never expected her to send a photograph, to acknowledge me again. I wish I could see the baby.” Her niece smiles sympathetically. She is staring at the photograph. “We, I thought we sent her out to die alone in exile. The exile, the young branch cut off and cast aside […] She has abandoned us. I wish I could hold the baby…” What is abandoned is abandoned, it never comes back. Let us not talk about it anymore. Let’s leave it to someone else. An abandoned treetop is abandoned eternally. (she has) No regrets, no remorse. no emotions. Nature is perfectly unaware of any considerations of the type of order. Instead it is us who sees her new family who we are unable to see… “I wish i could visit them. Just for an afternoon to see the baby…”