My older brother was a very capable person—the kind of person one would call a genius. He excelled at everything he touched, yet he never showed off. He possessed a bright, spirited personality and could also get along with anyone.
“Yumi! You have got to see this! I just put a ton of dry ice in the bath, and it is insane!”
“What is wrong with you…?”
“Yumi! I just made the most amazing mud pie! Here!”
“Ew. No… Is that really even mud?”
He would constantly dote on me, even though I was three years younger than him. I sometimes felt I was at the mercy of his whims, but I adored my brother dearly. However…as I grew older, I found myself unable to openly adore him anymore, for the gulf between us had become far too vast. What came effortlessly to him was impossible for me, and what he mastered in three days took me a month to grasp. Against my brother’s overflowing talent, I was painfully ordinary, bereft of any gifts at all.
“You seem to have no problem when it comes to basic conversation, Naotaka.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good. Come with me next week when I go to America. It’s time for you to practice using English with native speakers.”
Perhaps my father had recognized this early on. Being someone who valued talent above all else, he only ever had eyes for my brother and had never once turned his gaze toward me.
“Oh my. Naotaka is so smart. It’s hard to believe he’s still in elementary school.”
“Yes, it really is. He’s already at the top of his class, and he’s going to start school at Seirei Academy in spring, right? You must be so proud of him.”
“We don’t have to worry about the Suou family’s future, now! By the way, what about Yumi…?”
Family gatherings were always unbearably uncomfortable. Adults would always praise and exalt my brother while regarding me with contempt. Even my father would never speak much about me around them.
“Yumi’s a woman, and women have their own roles to fill.”
“Ha-ha! Yeah, good point. She’s beautiful, too. She definitely won’t have trouble finding a husband.”
Looking back, that might have been my father’s way of protecting me, but at the time, I couldn’t see it that way.
Being a woman is all I’m good for?
The only thing I was ever praised for was my appearance, which I was born with. No one expected me to accomplish anything. They assumed I couldn’t even if I tried.
“No, Yumi’s just a late bloomer! Trust me! I’m her brother!”
Even my brother’s kindness only made me feel more miserable. Tormented by my inferiority complex toward him, I hated myself for even sometimes wishing he weren’t here.
“You can’t let these things bother you. You’re special in your own way,” my mother would always say as I hung my head, enduring the shapeless malice.
Unlike my strict father, my mother was very kind and easygoing, always wearing a cheerful smile. Despite being a diplomat’s wife, she rarely accompanied my father abroad or engaged in social activities in Japan. She was always at home, watching over us siblings with that warm smile.
Besides, my mother didn’t understand English. She would often joke that she could hardly even speak Japanese, which made her a target for our relatives’ mockery when my father wasn’t present as well. Yet even when mocked, she would simply smile cheerfully without a care in the world. Some would even wonder out loud if she understood sarcasm because of her demeanor, so one day, I asked her about it.
“Doesn’t it frustrate you?”
I was frustrated, so my mother must have been frustrated, too. That was what I had assumed, but she simply shook her head without a worry in the world.
“Not at all. They just don’t know how amazing I am. That’s all.”
“…? You’re amazing?”
“Yep. And they don’t know this, which is why they say those things. But I know that I’m an incredible person, so I don’t care what they say,” she boasted, puffing out her chest with a laugh.
“I am amazing! I mean, look at the wonderful, admirable man who chose me! And look at the two adorable, talented children I gave birth to! Both you and Naotaka are amazing, too, and I know that better than anyone else, so you can’t let it bother you when these ignorant people speak ill of you.”
Seeing my mother’s confidence made me wonder if perhaps she truly was remarkable, but in the end, I couldn’t think the same way she did, so whenever something bad happened, I would always flee to the piano. The piano was my only forte, and the one thing I was confident I wouldn’t be outshined in by my brother. My father remained indifferent, as always, but my mother and brother often praised my playing. And one day, they even exclaimed:
“Yumi, you are so good at piano. Maybe you’ll become a professional pianist one day.”
“Oh! Yeah, that’d be awesome! She’s beautiful, too, so she’d look great in a gown!”
“What? Giggle… I don’t know.”
A professional pianist. Up until that day, I had been playing piano with no real ambition, but those words felt incredibly enticing. I couldn’t follow my father in his footsteps and become a diplomat, working actively across the globe, but perhaps I could become a pianist who performed worldwide. Surely, I would no longer feel inferior to my brother, and my relatives probably wouldn’t look down on me, either. With piano, the only thing I was ever good at, I was sure of it…
“I hear you want to become a pianist.”
When my father brought it up a few days later at the dinner table, I jumped in my seat. I figured he would say it was an unsuitable profession for a Suou daughter, or dismiss it as an unrealistic dream. However…
“If you need anything, you tell me. If you want to study abroad to learn piano, then I’ll arrange for it.”
“Oh…!”
“Give it everything you’ve got.”
For the first time, I felt my father had expectations for me. He was actually supporting my dream. This had to be the only path where I could truly shine, so from then on, I devoted myself entirely to the piano. Through my father’s connections, I found an exceptional teacher, excelled at domestic competitions, and entered a prestigious girls’ school with a music program.
Although I went to a middle school that wasn’t academically prestigious, which earned me more mockery from my relatives, I no longer hung my head in shame and endured their negativity. I learned that having something to rely on, or a place to call your own, naturally granted people confidence and peace of mind. I was amazing. One day, I was going to truly become a great pianist and show them all. Therefore, I could smile and brush off their ridicule. But when middle school started, it was filled with people aspiring to make a living as a musician, and my grades eventually stagnated.
“Don’t worry about it. Slumps are completely normal.”
“You’ve got this. Mom loves it when you play piano, and one day, everyone’s going to feel the same way.”
My mother and brother would always tell me that, but I was in my rebellious teenage phase, so I found both comments extremely annoying. My increasingly talented brother’s words sounded condescending to me, and my mother’s baseless encouragement only made me irritated.
“Get out of my room! I can’t concentrate when you’re here!” I would always say to my mother, driving her away whenever I played piano at home. At that time, everything about my mother annoyed me for some reason. Because her husband was amazing, because her children were amazing, she was supposedly amazing, too? Didn’t that mean she had nothing to be proud of except being a wife and mother? Because she had nothing to take pride in about herself, she took pride in her husband and children. Wasn’t that exactly the kind of person whose only value was being a woman?
That’s not the kind of life I want.
I didn’t want to parasitize other people’s worth and delude myself into thinking I had value. I wanted to become someone admired for their own achievements, like my father and brother, and I actually believed I could do it. After all, the exceptional blood of the Suou family flowed through my veins as well.
Therefore, I spent my days desperately devoting myself to the piano. It was about a year after that when my mother suddenly died. It was one week before my fourteenth birthday. My mother had gone out alone to buy me a birthday present, and she was mugged by two people on a motorcycle. When she resisted, she was dragged alongside their motorcycle until she fell, striking her head on the curb. When we received the call from the police, my brother and I rushed to the hospital, but my father was away on business overseas.
“M-Mom is…!”
Though I had found her so irritating, seeing my mother lying there, connected to those machines and unconscious, I could only think about how kind she always was to me. Why couldn’t I have returned even a fraction of that love? Regret swallowed me like waves as endless tears ran down my cheeks.
I desperately wanted to apologize to my mother. I wanted the chance to be kinder to her from now on. Clutching her hand with that desperate wish, I called her name over and over, pleading with her to wake up and sending countless prayers skyward, begging that she not be taken from me. But two days later, she passed away without ever regaining consciousness, unable to await my father’s return.
I was consumed by such sadness, such frustration, that I cried until I couldn’t breathe, and my brother, who held me as I wept, was crying just as much. My father was the only one who didn’t shed a single tear, not even when he saw her body. He arrived at the hospital hours after my mother’s passing, only to indifferently give the hospital the go-ahead to perform mortuary procedures. Even when he presided over my mother’s funeral, my father never wept. Superficial condolences seemed to be unnecessary for him as well.