Chapter Text
“Why?”
There’s no easy answer for that. Or maybe there is, but it’s none they’d understand.
“What are you doing to us?!” His voice is much deeper than hers, but it sounds shrill nevertheless due to the volume and the sound of the chair scratching over the floor when he stands up abruptly. “Do you think this is a joke? Is your brain so rotten?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but he wishes he could answer. If only they knew what’s going on in his brain. No chance to comment on that though, because father rounds the table and keeps yelling:
“I raised you like my own child and this is how you thank me? By ridiculing us? Making us lose our faces? Have you thought about what the customers will think? The neighbors? Your teachers? Have you no respect at all?!”
The slap in his face is louder than it is painful.
“Darling!” mother calls, but what does it help?
“You are a disgrace!” father screams, seemingly more angry with every second that he doesn’t get a reaction to his accusations. He grabs him by the tie, pulls on it to yank him closer, then grabs his blouse and pulls it out of the waistband. “You’re a freak, and now you show your true colors!” The small white buttons fly when father rips the blouse open. The sounds they make when they hit the floor remind him of the time he knocked over a jar of kompeito. Tick-tick-tick, tiny hailstones of sugar but tonight they’re white plastic that leaves his pale chest exposed to the too bright light of the dining room. “Take that off this instant,” father screams, drowning out mother’s weak attempts to calm him down. “Take that off or I’ll make you!” As if he wasn’t yanking on the short pleated skirt already. It sits too tight on his little waist to budge. Not for the lack of trying though. “You disgusting little bastard!” he adds as the seam rips. “I should have never let you into my house!” He’s not even aware how he insults mother too with those words. Probably can’t think about it as the zipper gives in and the skirt, pulled down violently, exposes the hips, and hugging them: soft white cotton with tiny watermelon slices on it, the sides tied carefully with little bows. It’s almost too short to store the soft little genitalia, but it feels good how tight girls’ underwear is. He really likes it.
Ah, but father doesn’t. He stares for a second, then he snaps. His hand grabs him by the hair, pulling him in some direction, it’s hard to tell if forward or to the left, then his fist hits the already reddened cheek.
Only now does mother interfere. It’s still half-heartedly, but she clings to fathers arm just when he pulls back for a second punch.
“Leave him alone, please!” she wails. “Let him go, let me talk to him, Darling, please!”
The fingers let go of his hair so suddenly he almost loses his balance. “Get out of my sight!” father screams, pushes him, foaming with rage. “Go to your room and don’t you dare come downstairs again, or I’ll show you!”
He never specifies what he’ll show him. How bad a father he is? How bad a human he is? How he has nothing in his chest but a dead, cold lump of foul flesh where a heart’s supposed to be? How he doesn’t feel guilty for punching his seventeen years old stepson over something meaningless like a school uniform?
“Go, go!” mother screams after him, ushering him up the stairs, the waistband of the skirt gathered in his one hand, the other on his aching scalp. A few hairs come off when he checks his hand, making his way upstairs.
In his room he closes the door softly, like everything he does. His head hurts, the scalp more so than his cheek despite the force of the slap and punch.
Through the window facing the street comes the white light of the street lamp, illuminating his room in the most subtle bluish glow. Just enough so he can see himself in the floor-length mirror next to his bed.
He looks vulnerable.
The tie of the girls’ uniform is the only item not in disarray, keeping the collar in order. Underneath it, the ripped off buttons make the blouse fall open, showing his flat chest and soft stomach. When he lets go of the checkered skirt that ends mid-thigh, it falls down exposing his little panties and the high socks that compliment his thick thighs. His messy hair, chin-long and dark but not black, contrasts beautifully with his pale face. So does the bruise that is rapidly forming on his cheek. He tilts his head a little so the disheveled strands frame his abused face. An abused face that still manages a smile.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers.
His mirror image smiles back at him. “Well done, Enmu-chan.”