“Akito pushed me down…and I fell backwards and hit my tailbone on the coffee table,” I confessed.
“I see…” said my mother. “I had a feeling it was something like that. All right. Thank you for being honest with me. And I’m so sorry I allowed such a thing to happen to you due to being an absentee parent. I’m such a horrible mother…”
“No, Mom! It’s not your fault at all. Please don’t say that.”
“Well, rest assured that I’ll be speaking to Akito about this. I’ll make it crystal clear to him that if anything like this ever happens again, he’ll be out on the streets.”
She sounded like she really meant it. I knew that I could count on her. Or at least, that’s how I felt at the time. That night, as I was falling asleep, I heard her yelling over in the living room, her voiced raised to a volume she rarely, if ever, used. Curious, I decided to go and take a look at what was going down. Taking care not to put any strain on my lower back, I hoisted myself up out of bed and stepped out into the hallway. Then I crept up to the door to the living room, which was open just a crack, and peeked inside. My brother was sitting there on the couch while my mother berated him ruthlessly. It was obvious from her frantic yelling how little experience she had punishing her children like this, and yet my brother sat there completely unfazed by any of the words she was saying. If anything, he looked annoyed at how loud she was being, as if he couldn’t wait for her to shut up. Then all of a sudden, he and I made eye contact. It was only for a split second, but that single glance was more than enough for him to convey to me that he was going to make me pay for this. Just you wait. Panicked, I slunk back into my bedroom to escape from his contemptuous gaze, already regretting my decision to tell my mother the truth.
By the time I recovered enough to return to swim practice, our team had long since been eliminated from the district preliminaries, and all of the seniors on the team had already retired. My remaining teammates welcomed me back with open arms, asking me if I was healing up okay and letting me know how much they’d missed me. Their appreciation of me during what was undoubtedly the most challenging year of my life really did mean the world to me, and I couldn’t help but tear up a little bit from how touched I felt. It also made me feel really bad, because I’d been so laser-focused on improving my lap times up until this point that I hadn’t made much of an effort to build a connection with any of them. I decided that from this point on, I would go out of my way to engage with them.
I started talking with my teammates a lot more after that, giving pointers to the first-year newbies and making small talk with the other girls whenever there was a break during practice. They were always extremely friendly to me, and whenever I was laughing with them, it allowed me to forget about all the painful aspects of my life for a while. It was probably the most fun I’d had since I entered high school, but it wouldn’t last for long. About two weeks after I returned from recovery, I was using the pool restroom when two of my teammates walked in and started gossiping about me. They didn’t realize that I was right there in one of the stalls.
“So what do you think Hoshina-san’s deal is, anyway?” said one of the girls. “I dunno what’s going through her head, but the way she’s been acting is pretty rich, if you ask me.”
“Right? Like, does she not realize that it was her stupid injury that screwed us out of going to nationals in the first place? And then she has the nerve to come smiling back like nothing even happened? It’s unbelievable.”
“Hey, you wanna know what I heard through the grapevine? They’re saying it was actually her brother that gave her that injury.”
“Wait, seriously? Like, legit domestic violence?”
“Yeah, apparently that guy’s turned into a real piece of work lately. Super fragile ego, always asking his friends for money and then never paying it back, beating his sister… Scumbag.”
“Wow, what a piece of crap. And you know he’s just wasting it all on booze too. How poor and trashy can one family be? I mean, at least Akari’s been busting her ass trying to save up money to go to college, I guess, but really?”
“Hey, don’t speak so soon. You never know! Maybe she’ll start begging us for money one of these days. And so the cycle of poverty continues!”
“Ha ha! Okay, but why do I feel like that might actually happen?”
I just sat there stunned for a while, long after the two girls exited the restroom. I couldn’t even muster up the will to be angry. All I felt was an intense self-loathing. It was so humiliating to think I’d taken their kind words and well-wishes at face value, even believed them when they said they really missed me… I was a fool to think they actually cared. I started deliberately avoiding all of my other teammates after that.
Thinking back on it now, this was probably where my deep-seated trust issues first began. Anytime I heard someone laughing by the poolside, I would automatically assume it was at my expense, and whenever any of the other girls came up and tried to talk to me, I went into defense mode and told myself they had some ulterior motive. They soon stopped trying to interact with me altogether, and I became a loner on the swim team once again. These trust issues soon started to rear their ugly heads in the classroom as well. While I generally spent most lunch periods face down on my desk, hoping to squeeze a nap in, I did try to socialize with my classmates a little bit before this debacle. After it, I talked to virtually no one and ate lunch by myself in silence.
No matter where I went, I felt unwanted. Like I didn’t belong.
The only place where I did find some solace was up on the school roof. Whenever it felt like I couldn’t take being surrounded by these people during lunch, I’d walk out of the classroom and go kill time on the upper landing of the stairwell where the roof access door was. Once I learned the trick to opening that door, I went out onto the rooftop and spent my lunches up there more and more often. I couldn’t tell you why, but something about being up there just calmed me down completely. It was the only place I felt like I could breathe. It was like the entire island of Sodeshima was a sunken city, and this was the only place high enough for me to poke my head up out of the water and get some fresh oxygen in my lungs. Whenever I looked down from up there, I felt the same exact thing: I need to get off this island, and fast. Then, without fail, the warning bell for fifth period would ring, and I’d sink back beneath the waves again. Forced to hold my breath for yet another day.
After my lower back injury, my brother eased off on all of his demanding and disruptive tendencies for a while. He stopped bringing his friends over to the house, and he didn’t order me around like I was his maidservant. Unfortunately, this new leaf of his didn’t last for long. By the fall of my sophomore year, his worst behaviors had come back with a vengeance. He was now being even more belligerent and obnoxious: partying even later into the night, constantly waking up hungover and in a foul mood, barking insults and throwing things at me again. On particularly bad days, he’d even punch me in the shoulder, or lift his leg up and slam his foot into the small of my back. He seemed to feel no remorse whatsoever for having fractured one of my bones—if anything, injuring me had only emboldened him and made him feel like he could get away with anything.
I didn’t have the willpower to fight back anymore, either. I always apologized and acted like nothing happened. My mother would yell at him just about anytime they were in the same room, but this only made things worse, as he would then proceed to take his frustration from being scolded out on me with more physical abuse.
My life was a living hell. And yet no matter how hard things got, I knew I couldn’t afford to rest even one minute. I had to pour all of my time and energy into my studies, my swimming, and my job, so that once I graduated, I could get away from this godforsaken place once and for all. That was the one thought I found reassurance in, that this would all end when I made it out of high school. Moving to Tokyo to be with Kanae again was my one and only glimmer of hope through the darkest days of my young life. Still, by completely snuffing out any sense of self-worth I might have had, I narrowly managed to make it through each day. It got to the point where I was completely happy trimming off a few years from my life span if it meant a better life in Tokyo down the line.
And so I worked myself to the bone, praying that the worst of it would soon be over. I resolved not to let any obstacle or hardship get me down again, no matter how crushing. But today, on April 1st, in the middle of spring break before my senior year, and the same day that Kanae came back to Sodeshima for the first time in years… Today was the day the world found a way to rip my heart in two…and break my spirit completely.
I had work until three in the afternoon today. Usually, I worked a full shift on the weekends, but the inn was closed tomorrow, so I got off early. I went home, unlocked the door, and stepped into our apartment. I then headed down the hallway to my room but noticed something was amiss the second I entered; my desk drawer was hanging open ever so slightly. I’d always been very particular about closing it, so it struck me as pretty strange. I shrugged it off and walked over to close it, nonetheless. Right as I was about to do so, I peeked inside, and my hands froze. Both my bankbook and my signature-authorization stamp were gone.
“…What the…?”
I stood there for a while, inert. Reflecting on it now, it was something of a calm before the storm.
“W-wait, but…”