Mom
dark heroA week later, the television in one of the Brown Mansion’s sitting rooms continued to show the same images.
The school appeared behind the reporter, much of its exterior concealed by barriers and temporary coverings. What remained visible was blackened by fire, with shattered windows and a collapsed section of the entrance offering some indication of the violence that had taken place there.
“Authorities continue to investigate the gas explosion that severely damaged the school last week. Although investigators have not yet determined the precise cause, the explosion is believed to have originated in an external storage tank before spreading to the surrounding structure.”
The report changed to footage recorded from farther along the street. Smoke rose above the rooftops as emergency vehicles surrounded the area.
“Despite the extent of the damage, no fatalities have been confirmed. Police have declined to comment on reports of unidentified individuals seen leaving the area shortly before emergency services arrived. The school will remain closed while structural assessments and the investigation continue.”
Diana muted the television.
The silence that replaced it did little to improve the atmosphere in the room.
For the past week, the mansion had felt less like a home than a private hospital. Medical equipment had been brought in, staff moved through the corridors at every hour, and the same handful of doctors continued to offer reassurance without being able to explain what had happened.
One of them sat opposite Diana now, a tablet resting across his knees.
“The results remain encouraging,” he said. “There is no sign of damage to his brain or internal organs. The burns are severe in appearance, particularly the one across his chest, but the tissue beneath them is recovering far better than we expected.”
Diana’s expression remained unchanged.
“And yet he has been unconscious for seven days.”
“Yes.”
“That does not sound encouraging.”
The doctor paused, choosing his next words carefully.
“Under normal circumstances, no. However, his condition has remained stable throughout the week. His body does not appear to be failing. If anything, most of his readings have gradually improved.”
“Then why has he not woken up?”
“We cannot identify a medical reason.”
Diana leaned back slightly, her eyes settling on the dark television screen.
Beside her, Segu sat with both hands closed around one another. She had barely left Nezu’s room during the past week and had only agreed to come downstairs after the doctor insisted there had been no change since his last examination.
The star-shaped mark across her fingers had not burned again.
That did not reassure her.
The doctor glanced towards the staircase before returning his attention to Diana.
“At this stage, there is nothing to suggest that Nezu will suffer permanent damage. His breathing is normal, his neurological responses are present, and the latest tests show no deterioration. In fact, judging by the changes recorded this morning, he should be awakening at—”
A door struck the wall somewhere beyond the sitting room.
Footsteps thundered through the corridor.
Diana turned towards the sound. Segu was already standing.
Steve appeared in the doorway seconds later.
He was breathing heavily.
In all the years Diana had known him, she had seen Steve face threats, emergencies and the occasional disaster created by the children without surrendering his composure. She had never seen him running through the mansion.
Until now.
“Madam.”
He stopped long enough to draw breath, one hand gripping the side of the doorway.
“Nezu woke up.”
Diana was already moving before Steve finished speaking.
She crossed the sitting room and hurried into the corridor, abandoning the composure she had maintained throughout the previous week. The doctor followed behind her, asking questions that Steve attempted to answer, while Segu remained close enough that Diana could hear her uneven breathing at her side.
The distance to Nezu’s room had never felt so great.
Diana pushed open the door.
Nezu was awake.
He lay against the pillows, his face pale and his eyes only partially open. One hand rested near the bandages covering his chest, while the other held weakly to the edge of the blanket. The monitors surrounding the bed continued their steady rhythm, indifferent to the people gathered in the doorway.
His eyes moved between them without recognition at first.
They passed over Steve.
Over the doctor.
Over Segu.
Then they found Diana.
Something changed in his expression.
The distant emptiness that had occupied his eyes for years was gone. In its place was something vulnerable and uncertain, an emotion he did not yet understand but no longer seemed capable of hiding.
The corners of his mouth lifted.
It was a small, exhausted smile, unsteady from unfamiliarity, but unmistakably real.
Diana stopped breathing.
She had imagined that smile for years. She had wondered what might cause it, what it would look like and whether she would ever be there to see it.
Nezu looked directly at her.
“Mom.”
Diana stopped.
For years, he had called her by her name. Never mockingly and never with anger. He had simply spoken it with the same detached certainty he applied to everything else, as though the word mother belonged to a relationship he understood but could not feel.
Now he was smiling at her as if he finally could.
Diana reached the bed and gathered him into her arms, careful of the bandages across his chest. Nezu tensed at first, startled by the embrace, before his weakened hand closed around the fabric at her back.
Diana had remained composed through the explosion, through seven days without answers and through every doctor who could tell her that her son was alive without explaining why he would not wake.
A smile and one word broke what none of it could.
Diana cried.
Nezu’s smile disappeared.
He stared at the tears running across her face, and something tightened inside his chest. It was different from the pain beneath the bandages. That pain had a location and a cause.
This did not.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Diana pulled back far enough to look at him.
“No.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because I’m happy.”
Nezu studied her face as though the answer might be hidden somewhere within it. Diana was smiling despite the tears, but the two things did not belong together in any pattern he understood.
“This is happy?”
“For me, it is.”
He lowered his eyes.
The strange pressure inside his chest remained. It seemed connected to Diana somehow, growing whenever he looked at her tears and weakening whenever she smiled.
None of it made sense.
“You smiled too,” Segu said.
Nezu looked towards her.
She stood on the opposite side of the bed, watching him with an expression almost as unfamiliar as Diana’s. Her eyes were wet, but her mouth threatened to form a smile of its own.
“I did?”
Segu nodded.
Nezu touched the corner of his mouth. He remembered the movement now, but not the decision to make it. The smile had simply appeared when he saw Diana, as naturally as his hand would close around something placed inside it.
“Why?”
A small sound escaped Segu, caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“You’re asking us why you smiled?”
“I didn’t tell it to happen.”
“That is generally how smiling works.”
Nezu considered that.
The doctor finally reached the bed and placed his tablet on the nearby table.
“As touching as this is, I need to examine him.”
Diana moved aside reluctantly, remaining close enough that her hand never completely left Nezu’s arm. Segu stepped back as well, allowing the doctor to check his pupils before turning his attention to the monitors.
“Nezu, do you know where you are?”
“My room.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
Nezu looked down at the bandages covering his chest.
“There was a light.”
His fingers moved towards them.
Diana caught his hand before he could touch the injury.
“Don’t.”
The word came out more sharply than she intended.
Nezu froze.
The pressure inside his chest changed again. This time it brought something colder with it, a sensation that made him want to withdraw his hand even though Diana was holding it gently.
The doctor noticed the movement.
“Are you in pain?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“My chest hurts.”
“That would be expected.”
“Not there.”
Nezu pressed his free hand against the centre of his chest, above the bandages but not quite touching them.
“Inside.”
Diana’s grip tightened.
The doctor glanced at the monitor, but none of the readings had changed.
“Can you describe it?”
Nezu tried.
The sensation had no shape. No temperature. No clear location despite seeming to occupy his entire chest. It had appeared when Diana cried, changed when she raised her voice and softened as soon as she touched him.
“No.”
“That’s all right. We’ll take this slowly.”
The doctor began a series of simple questions. Nezu answered his name, the date and everything he remembered before the light struck him. His responses came without hesitation, but his attention repeatedly moved away from the examination.
Towards Segu.
Even when she stood behind him.
The first time, Segu assumed he had heard her move.
The second time, she became still.
The doctor continued speaking as Segu quietly stepped towards the other side of the room. Nezu’s eyes remained forward, but his head tilted slightly in her direction.
Segu took another step.
His gaze followed.
She stopped near the door.
Nezu turned towards her.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Segu looked down at the star-shaped mark across her fingers. Nothing about it had visibly changed, yet the awareness beneath it was no longer the same. For years, she had carried a sense of Nezu that he could never return. She had always known where he was, whether he was near and, in the worst moments, whether something had happened to him.
Now something looked back.
Her fingers slowly closed over the mark.
When she raised her eyes again, Nezu was still watching her. He could not explain the certainty that told him exactly where she stood, but something in Segu’s expression told him that she already understood.
A silent recognition passed between them.
Segu returned to the side of the bed.
Neither said a word.
The doctor glanced between them before continuing the examination.
“We can investigate anything unusual later. For now, I need everyone to give him some space.”
“I have enough space,” Nezu said.
“You have four people surrounding your bed.”
“That isn’t a problem.”
The doctor lowered the small light he had been holding.
“You have been unconscious for a week. You need rest, limited stimulation and—”
“A week?”
For the first time since waking, Nezu tried to sit upright.
Pain crossed his chest immediately.
Diana and the doctor pushed him gently back against the pillows while the monitors accelerated around them.
“Careful,” Diana said.
Nezu barely heard her.
His eyes moved around the room, searching.
“Where is Kuro?”
“He’s alive,” Segu said.
Nezu looked directly at her.
“Where?”
“In another room. The doctors have been watching him too.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“Because this room was not designed for both a patient and a cat,” the doctor said.
“Then bring him.”
“Nezu—”
“Is he awake?”
No one answered immediately.
That was enough.
The unfamiliar cold spread through Nezu again, sharper than before. His breathing changed with it, becoming faster despite his attempts to control it.
Segu returned to the side of the bed.
“He’s alive,” she repeated. “I can feel him breathing whenever I hold him, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”
Nezu looked at her hands.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
The cold did not disappear, but it loosened enough for him to breathe properly.
The doctor observed the change before checking the monitor again.
“You need to remain calm.”
“I was calm.”
“No, you were not.”
Nezu looked at the numbers displayed beside the bed.
The doctor was correct.
That troubled him more than the accusation itself. His body was reacting without permission, changing its breathing, pulse and even its expression before he decided what any of them should do.
He looked towards Diana again.
“Is something wrong with me?”
The question silenced the room.
Diana sat on the edge of the bed.
“We don’t know what happened yet.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She hesitated.
Nezu had always asked difficult questions in the simplest possible way. Before, he had accepted equally simple answers, storing them until he had enough information to reach his own conclusions.
Now he was waiting for something more than information.
“No,” Diana said. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
The pressure inside his chest eased.
Nezu noticed it happen.
He did not know why he trusted her answer when the doctor had no explanation for his condition and none of them understood what the light had done to him. Logically, her certainty proved nothing.
Yet it helped.
The doctor completed the rest of the examination while Diana remained beside Nezu. His physical condition appeared stable, although every answer seemed to create two more questions. Eventually, the doctor accepted that he would learn nothing useful while the room remained crowded.
“I want him resting,” he said. “No unnecessary movement, no removing the bandages and no attempts to leave this bed.”
Nezu looked towards the door.
“That includes visiting Kuro.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked at the door.”
“That does not constitute an attempt.”
“With you, it generally precedes one.”
Steve concealed something that might have been a smile.
The doctor collected his tablet and motioned for the others to follow him. Diana stood last, her hand lingering over Nezu’s before she finally released it.
“We’ll let you rest.”
Nezu watched her walk towards the door.
“Mom.”
She stopped.
For years, Diana had been his mother whether he understood the word or not. She had raised him, protected him and remained beside him even when he could offer little affection in return. He had always known those facts.
Only now did they feel like more than facts.
Diana turned back.
Nezu smiled again.
The expression was still small and unfamiliar, but this time it had not happened without his knowledge. He had chosen it—or at least attempted to.
“You called me Mom again,” Diana said.
“Is that wrong?”
“No.”
She wiped her face, although another tear had already replaced the one she removed.
“Then I’ll keep calling you Mom.”
Diana’s composure lasted less than a second.
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