I am Caroline Aoki and this is my story. There are no exciting turn of events in my life, hence I would request all my readers to keep away their fantasy-seeking mind before joining the journey down my memory lane .

On 13 August 1964, a new soul was born to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson and was named Caroline.

Throughout my childhood I was bullied by some for reasons unknown to me. Oh no! I do know why , I had a flat nose and narrow eyes, a weird reason right?! But at times I did feel that there is something slightly different about me which kept me at a distance from my American pals. Some days when the bullies exceeded the limit I would rush to my mom’s lap and a hug from her would make things alright.

My mom was my greatest buddy. One day, while I was so engrossed in a hide –and-seek game with her, I decided to make our attic my hiding spot.

Though I was forbidden from being to the attic, the spirit of the game made me forget all the warnings. There I encountered a file which appeared to be occasionally touched unlike the other stuffs out there ,which if were humans would have completed their lifespan and happily left the world.

I opened the file and there came up some wrinkled sheets of papers whose ages were directly proportional to the depth at which it were kept in the file.

The first sheet turned out to be some marksheets of a girl named Hayana, who, when closely inspected, resembled my mom’s childhood picture.

As I progressed through the file I saw some newspaper clippings. I could hardly makeout what they were about but one word hit me hard,’ Hiroshima’.  I tried to recollect what I had heard about this place in some my history classes and ... I could feel chills running down my spine.

I could find my legs running towards my mom with the newly found evidences to know the connection between a lot of things that were strangled in me.

All I got from my mom was a ‘hot’ cold stare that slowly melted to a few drops of tears.But since my emotions were on lax I decided to go ahead and pester my mom until the truth was spat out.

I needed answers to the questions that were suffocating me…. ‘Who was Hayana?’…’What does she have to do with my mom?’… ‘Does Hiroshima mean something  more to my mom than just a name in history textbooks?’….questions were endless.

In my second  mission to probe the truth I succeeded as my  mom opened her pandora of secrets.

Before me unfolded the live stories of war-shattered lives. As the secrets began to spill down I was hit by lot of realizations ... Hayana Aoki was Mrs. Halena Anderson, my very own mother. The answer to why I was bullied and why I was different from my pals slowly came out from behind the clouds. I could hear the wailings and howlings of people who had to see their own blood succumb to death ,each time my mom shuttered. I realized that she had to undergo a lot before Mr. Anderson, my loving dad, came to her life and took her to a different destination.

That night was a horrifying one for me.I couldn’t shut my eyes nor could I open it well.

The next day I ran to my mom and said ‘I don’t want to die, am scared to die, am afraid!’…yes, I was afraid indeed.

My mom first chuckled it off as she might have felt my fright is quite insignificant in comparison to  the emotional rollercoaster a mother undergoes in the morning until the chores are done. But when she felt my hot tears burn a hole in her hand she hugged me tighter and said ‘No one can be immortal my child!’.

Today when I look back I would like to count it as a pure lie, at least that's what my life has taught me. Else how would I talk to my teen boy who left us  alone and escaped to a world of no pain . Yes, I can still see him and I can still feel him cos he is very much here in this world with me though his body might not be.

His heart beats in one, he became the eyes of two others, then how can he not be called immortal!

Now its my turn to fulfil my own wish of being immortal.

I hope to be the beat in someone’s life and the colour in someone’s world. What is a better way to attain immortality than this! After all I believe I am destined to do this as I was sent to this beautiful world on ‘August 13’!