Jinny stared up in surprise at the strange, scary man in the mask who had no reaction to being poked. She held the knife in both of her small hands, trying not to show that she was afraid. But her hands were making the knife shake, so it was very obvious. When he asked her a question, she couldn’t help but respond, rather politely considering the situation.

“Okaa-san told me to! She said whoever comes in I poke them with the knife. It didn’t work.” She looked at the knife, then back to him. Her hands dropped, and she looked utterly defeated, the sort of look that a child shouldn’t wear.

“Are you going to send me to heaven too?” Her eyes were reddened from crying, but her face was dry. It had seemed she had cried everything out. “I don’t think I want to go.” 

She just didn’t understand, and so she started to talk. Maybe this was a grown up thing that she wasn’t allowed to know about. “We were eating dinner, and then the door exploded. The ladies in white came in and they knew Okaa-san’s name, and then Okaa-san had a sword, a really pretty one. And Daddy had a gun, and then they fought, and then we ran, and Okaa-san hid me in the closet. I didn’t see the rest.” She pointed at the bodies of her parents. “And then they went to heaven. That’s it.”  

A little sigh escaped the child, as she looked past the stranger to her parents. There was a struggle behind her brown eyes, a battle between the child she was before, and the child she was now. The current child won out, and she carefully approached the two bodies. She touched her mother’s face with one small hand, then her father’s. Her head dipped, her bangs drooping over her eyes.

“...you don’t come back from heaven, do you? They’re not going to come back.” She looked back at the stranger for confirmation, but her eyes held no hope.

“I’m all by myself now.”