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If you asked Matteo what his childhood fear was, he'd respond with a shrug, a questioning look, and a change of conversation.
If you asked his mother, she'd blink at you a few times, tilt her head, maybe ask you to repeat the question slower. She would repeat this until you give up and change the subject yourself.
A silent camaraderie, unspoken between mother and son. If no one else acknowledged it, it didn't have to exist. They didn't have to let it be a reality.
Matteo was afraid of drowning.
Carina never understood what it was that crossed the wires in her son's brain, what made him so utterly terrified of water. Maybe it was the lack of it in day to day life; they lived a solid two, three hours from the coast, away from the vibrant city life of San Fransokyo, away from everything. They never had a swimming pool, or knew anyone with one, the closest to even a kiddie pool he had growing up was a plastic bucket used for collecting rainwater.
Carina can remember faint images from her own childhood of a bright yellow sundress, clear jelly shoes and long brunette braids, all drenched from spending the hot summer days in the river behind her old home. She can more clearly remember driving to the shore as a teen, friends piled into the back of a beat up truck as the Italia sun beat down on them. She doesn't know if staying would have helped. Maybe if Matteo had those same memories of summers spent in streams rather than the gardening shed, he'd have spent his childhood running towards the water, not shaking at the mere thought of it.
God, as if the shaking wasn't bad enough, he had to scream too.
Years and years of rushing through the halls, having to physically shake Matteo out of his nightmares when they just wouldn't stop. Her son, her child, her baby, brought to screaming tears by the idea of drowning, of swimming, of water.
It never got better. Matteo just got older, got more rational, got better at hiding. He didn't scream anymore, but spent mornings before school falling asleep at the table, dark circles gaining prominence every day and eyesight growing consistently worse from staying up in the dark every night.
Matteo stopped screaming through the night when he was 13 years old.
He'd just wake up, clearly traumatized but not willing or wanting to talk about it with Carina. She understood why not.
And as much as it killed her to admit it, she was almost grateful for the quiet. She could finally sleep through the night again, and even if he was waking up in the morning terrified, he was at least getting sleep again.
Things continued to change. Carina's business gained more customers, and Matteo started highschool with relative success. He was excelling in his STEM courses, a planned future of astronomy making itself clearer and clearer.
(Carina privately wondered if it was an attempt on his part to get as far away from the water as possible.)
When Matteo entered grade 10, he started therapy. It took some convincing on Carina's part, memories of her own mother calling her crazy for even suggesting it clouding her judgment, but the rest of her brain, scarred by screams of pure terror for years upon years, won the fight between her two sides.
Finally, it started to get better. Matteo started to get better. His already above-average grades began to improve even more, he befriended a teen his age at one of Carina's galas, he had even been accepted into one of the best STEM schools in the country -
San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.
He got a place on campus. He made friends, he was seemingly thriving in his new environment, living away from home for the first time and loving every second of it.
Two years later, and a boyfriend has apparently entered the picture. Or at least, that's when Matteo told her.
He was another student at the university, studying robots(or something along those lines.) They formally met at an incredibly tense dinner, where Carina had spent the entire day judging his entire plan for the future in Italian while Matteo looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.
Overall, the meeting had gone well. Carina had no real reason to disapprove, and above all else, Matteo was happy. Really, truly happy.
And who was she to deny him that?
(Although she would continue to pester him with questions of "Really, Matteo? Robots?")
They had, to her surprise, been a couple for two and a half years when she was given a surprise visit and a question that would haunt her for the rest of her life. There was Matteo's boyfriend, standing on her doorstep, dressed semi-formally and looking unbelievably nervous as she invited him in with a questioning look.
It was a simple conversation, really.
He sat down across her dining table from her as she poured him a cup of coffee. She folded her hands on the table like her grandmother had taught her while he fidgeted nervously.
It was a simple question as well.
Ms. Ammassari, he started with. I have been in a relationship with your son for two and a half years now, he continued.
I love him with every fiber of my being, and I believe he loves me as well, he said. (She didn't tell him just how much Matteo was infatuated with him. She should have.)
I came to you today to ask if you'd give me your blessing to ask for your son's hand in marriage, he finished.
See? Simple.
Simple question, simple answer.
She agreed.
And she most certainly did not cry.
He did.
She was shown the ring, half of a folding sphere that apparently would create an astrological map, or something along those lines. She learned he intended to propose on Christmas, which was more than fine by her. Apparently Matteo already had the other half of the ring, given to him on their anniversary as a promise ring.
How quaint, she responded.
He left with a hug, her guard dropping momentarily in the face of her future son-in-law, and she went back to her room and took a moment to compose herself.
Her son, her child, her baby, was going to be engaged in less than four months.
Less than a single month later, a fire destroys a building at the SFIT Student Showcase, and Carina watches in real time on the news as her son is dragged away screaming from an explosion that might as well have killed him.
Matteo comes home until school starts again.
He doesn't eat.
He doesn't speak.
He barely functions as a human being.
There are conflicting stories going around about the fire.
Some say it was arson.
Others say it was a freak accident.
Some even say it was revenge.
But Carina could not possibly care less.
Because Matteo is screaming through the night again.
But this time, things have changed. Because it's not drowning, it's not swimming, it's not water that's tearing incoherent screams from his raw throat every night.
It's fire.
And the screams are no longer shrieks, unidentifiable in the dark of the night.
They're one word, one name, blaring into her skull even when he's finished screaming.
It's the last remnant of a promised future.
"TADASHI!"