Long long ago, in a city that was Fujiyama, Ami’s mother, Kimiko Mori, worked as a maid to a rich and powerful family of half foreigners.

(Face Claim: ToukoYadomi from anohana)

The second son took a fancy to her and, in Hamlet style, made many tenders of his love to her. They were together in secret because his family were snobs, but he promised that he would marry her. She fell for him and, at age 20, became pregnant with his son. The man had promised that, should this happen, they would marry.

They didn’t.

The man brought Kimiko before his mother and declared his feelings and intentions, but she interrupted to drop the bombshell that his older brother’s plane had gone down leaving him as heir then asked him if he still wished to claim the child as his. She said that if he did, he would be cut from the family because she refused to recognize “a dirty common jap” as her daughter in law. (her husband was Japanese, but he was rich enough to make up for that) 

The man denounced Kimiko and his mother had him fire her for “wanton slandering of the family name” and Miss Mori was sent, five months pregnant, into the streets. She worked odd jobs and tried to get positions with various other Fujiyama families, but one by one they shut her out. One family was kind enough to explain that they didn’t want to get on the bad side of Mrs. X (name tbd) who had blacklisted her. 

Ami was born prematurely due to stress and had serious health complications when he was an infant due to his mother’s constant anxiety and inconsistent diet due to working conditions. She had been made to operate heavy machinery in a  factory up to a week before his birth then was fired for “incompetence”. 

Because of these medical expenses and Kimiko’s inability to find work, she and Ami lived with her sister’s family for three years: helping run their bakery. When the child was three, Ami’s doctor suggested they get out of the city for the health benefits of the country-side and, lo and behold, Kimiko finally found work as the personal caretaker to the elderly Hamasaki-sama. The Hamas blatantly ignored the X family’s threats until they stopped coming.

Ami’s biological father married two weeks after Kimiko was “dissmissed.”