The room was silent now that the storm had passed.My mom was still lying on the floor. Her hair was still a mess with tears staining her beautiful and lovely face.I slowly walked towards her and crouched down to gaze into her eyes that were cast down.I gently held her quivering shoulders and brought her close to mine, hugging her tightly.The quivering stopped and I heard the sound of faint sobs escaping her lips.“I am sorry.” She said.“No. Mom, why are you apologizing?”“It’s all my fault. Because of me even you have to suffer at the hands of your father. I am sorry. I am sorry, Kage!”The tears burst forth like damn and she wrapped her arms around me tightly.“No. Stop it, mom. It was not your fault. It never had been!”It was all his fault. All that bastard’s fault. She had nothing to be blamed for. It was my dad and his drinking habits that were the cause of it all.This had been a daily routine for us now. Day after day, I was made to witness the same scene again and again.

When lunch period finally rolled over, I excused myself and went to the cafeteria.Since I hadn’t eaten a proper breakfast, I bought a heavy lunch.My plate full of all the available dishes in the school canteen, I made my way to the empty seat on the left by the window side.I immediately started wolfing down the lunch.When I finished, I was completely stuffed. Although I didn’t have my stomach sticking out, I stroked it gently.“Gosh, I don’t think I can move for a while.”I decided to stay there until the lunch period ended.As I was watching other students play on the ground through the window with my elbow on the table and chin resting on my palm, someone settled in the seat in front of me.“May I sit here?”“By all means.”Horikita-san sat on the seat with two cream-filled bread and a can of milk.Seeing that I couldn't help myself from asking.“Will just that be enough?”She immediately understood what I was getting at.“Yeah. Even this is more than I usually eat. I didn’t get

The days continued like ever. Not changing. The same as usual.The same routine at home. My parents continued to fight as usual. My drunkard father continued to drink and hurl all sorts of abuse and accusations at her. She was condemned for things she hadn’t even done. Like cheating on him with other men. That was just a drunken fantasy – no – the drunken nightmare of my dad. It was just that while he was drunk his insecurities will come to the surface and that overwhelms him which then drives him to abuse my mom. He even would resort to violence. Whenever he raised his hands on mom, I raised my hands against him. A fourteen or fifteen-year-old son raising his hands against his own father? How comical it can be. And how pathetic it can get.The same routine in school. I read as everybody else did. I spent time with other people. I continued to give a fake laugh so that they will accept me. Ayase-sensei tried once again to get me laid. And I once again resisted her advances.However,

It had started raining at some point. It was a downpour. The rain was so heavy that it had made it difficult to see around. The very same rain that I enjoyed so much getting soaked in, I started hating it. It was making it difficult to see and I had lost where my dad had disappeared to. “Damn it! It had to rain at a time like this!” I cursed the heavens. That was when another realization hit me. Everything depends upon circumstances. The very same rain that I loved – I hated it now. It was the same rain but now I hated it. Why the difference? It was the circumstance that I was in that made me despise the rain. Maybe at some point in the future, I might come to love rain again. But at that moment, I wasn’t in the state to think about the future. I wasn’t so sure that I even had a future. I just ran along the road, not caring how wet I was and how heavy my dress felt. After that scene inside the house, my dad suddenly dashed off and I followed after him gripped by a deadly p

The days after that incident – after that tragedy – I don’t remember it that much. It was just a dark time I spent in my dark room with my curtains closed off and with no source of light inside.I just stayed in my bed for days with the blanket wrapped all over me like I was a delicate package to be handled with care. Which at that time, I was. Even the action of wrapping myself with a blanket was probably born out of a subconscious desire to protect myself. I was this close on the brink of collapsing after all. That blanket acted as a thin shell enveloping my broken soul, trying to heal my soul with its burning warmth.With that warmth, I tried to burn away the memories of that day. But I wasn’t able to. The memories I tried to suppress always found a way to crawl up my brain and heart coming off as an evil surprise every time. Even though I shouldn’t be surprised.This tormented me for the whole two weeks.Every time I tried to forget that tragedy ever happened, flashbacks of the ev