Snippet 4
Higuchi joins the mafia when she’s fifteen for a lack of other options. Kuniko, her sister, is too young to work. Her mother is too ill. Her brother is dead. Her father is dead, having ruined them with bad investments before funeral arrangements emptied their accounts. It’s all down to Higuchi.
There aren’t many places that will hire a fifteen-year-old and provide enough money for a three-person household, so she has few choices.
Somehow, of those choices, the mafia is the best option.
~
When she was a little girl, before everything in her life went wrong, she’d thought she’d be a nurse one day.
She thought she'd be healing, not dealing out more hurt.
But the thing is that this doesn't feel wrong.
The weight of a gun in her hands is comfortable and feels easier to carry than the expectations heaped on her.
No one here looks at her and thinks about her many failures as a daughter, sister, and woman. No one here expects her to save them, to fix every hurt they have.
Higuchi has always been the healer, the nurturer, but maybe she doesn't have to be.
She keeps her ability to her chest. She doesn’t need it. She’s a good shot and a good driver, and she slowly works her way up based on her own skills alone. She won’t be confined to the infirmary, relegated to bandages and stitches for the rest of her life.