Jump 164: Poka the Blind Girl

Jump 164: Poka the Blind Girl

Location: An American Town
Age: 12
Identity: Friend
Drawbacks: None

[600/1000]  Bully Instincts
[Free]      Friendly
[900/1000]  Power of Friendship
[950/1000]  Ribbon
[Free]      Cheeseburger!
[1000/1000] Childhood Friend: Azula
[Free]      Poka

There once was a blind girl who was so desperate for good things in her life that she desperately tried to be friends with people who would harass and bully her. To embrace having the worst possible adoptive parents, because then at least she had parents at all. You see, she could put up with the mistreatment, just grin and bear it... but of all the things in her life, the last that she wanted was anyone's pity. And often the blind are pitied simply as a matter of course. Hers was a congenital blindness - short of brain surgery, she'd never see - but she had a few good things in her life. Despite everything, she had a roof over her head and a full belly. A St. Bernard. A guitar that she was actually quite adept at playing.

And then two new students in the school took the time to speak with her and actually make friends with her.

Really, this didn't change all that much. The bullying didn't go away overnight, of course, but it did lessen. The days were brighter, in a manner of speaking. She wasn't stupid of course, she realized that Azula was running interference at school. And that no one ever tried to push her down the stairs, though she felt someone try once, only for them to fall instead. Not everything was perfect, even if her parents still argued constantly, but her thirteenth birthday was the last time anyone pushed her face in a cake. And even bullies can learn by way of the Pavlovian method, even though in her darker moments she thought perhaps they could have learned via the Darwinian method if they kept it up.

No, not everything was magically fixed. Sometimes it even felt like the world was going out of its way to try to upset her. But she had a good friends as she grew up, and living with her adoptive parents wasn't forever - especially as they quite literally kicked her out on her eighteenth birthday, she stayed with Azula until something could be set up for her to have her own apartment, something that would suit her needs.

One day well into adulthood, two of her friends - the pair who had befriended her in seventh grade - asked her over dinner whether she'd want to have a childhood where she was supported, where she was able to have friends and be supported, instead of being thrown into the deep end. She scoffed, of course. Everyone wants to be loved, she told them. Everyone wants to be happy. But sometimes we can only make due by finding happiness, by searching out every little bit, by forcing ourselves to smile day by day while looking for the reason to smile. But if she had it to do over again, then yes, she would have liked to have all those things.

The last thing she remembered before things went dark and she woke up in a classroom in Japan was one of them saying, "Some people deserve second chances at happiness. You're one of them."