Our family started out with four.
We were happy, Papa and Mama were in love, Hina-nii was probably going to be getting a sports college scholarship in baseball, and I was excelling in my studies.
That was when I was eleven, Hina-nii was fourteen.
But then, Papa started coming home later, smelling like smoke and blood, deep cuts and bruises all over.
Papa and Mama started fighting more often, sometimes Mama would get bruises. Hina-nii cried a lot and would argue with Papa.
When I asked him what was happening he would tell me to not worry about, if I asked again, he'd tell me to shut up, but he would always apologize and hug me.
This happened for awhile, but a couple weeks before I turned twelve, Papa died. Mama would scream and cry, then she'd be emotionally exhausted and go to sleep. Then Hina-nii would cook us supper, usually curry with chicken cutlets.
So our family was left with three.
It was okay for awhile, Mama stopped crying a lot and would take us to the park and play with us. We'd play Frisbee or catch, that was always fun.
Sometimes people would bully me, but Hina-nii usually always showed up and scared them away. Eventually though, Hina-nii wasn't around at all.
He would skip school and stay out till three or four in the morning. Mama yelled at him a lot, and started crying more often.
One time, when Mama was at work, I came home from school early (propane leak), and I heard noise in the basement.
I went down there and Hina-nii was there, hanging out with a group of guys, a large, round man (who used to bully me), a creepy tall man with a halberd (the kind I see in video games) on his lap, another creepy guy hugging a wooden sword, a Caucasian with a red bandanna covering his eyes and a weird man with glasses without his shirt on.
They were smoking pot, and beer cans littered the table.
The man with the halberd pointed and yelled at me. Then Hina-nii cursed at me, I tried to run away 'cause this side of Hina-nii scared me, but he caught me, and slammed me down on the floor while the other men took away my clothes as Hina-nii twisted my arm around my back. Hina-nii threatened me that if I ever told Mama, pictures of me without my clothes (taken by the man without his shirt) on would be posted on Facebook and my life would end. I promised I wouldn't tell Mama, and he let me go.
I stayed upstairs in my room for the rest of the day, I kept my door locked. Often I would hug or talk to my stuffed fox Yuzuru, who I got when I was three, to make me feel better.
The bullying happened more often, and Hina-nii joined in. It became a norm for me to go to the nurse's office with a bloody nose and a black eye and sometimes bringing spare uniforms to school because they tore them up when they... did painful things to my privates and leaving me all slimy when they are done. Mama let me transfer schools when my wrists got broken.
One night, Hina-nii had gone out drinking with his buddies. The cops say that they had been driving on the wrong side of the road when a semi came and hit them, nobody was wearing their seat-belts, the only guy who survived was the Caucasian guy (the tall guy tried to shield him and keep him from flying through the windshield), he was in a coma for half a year before they took him off of life support.
At the funeral me and Mama sat in the front, in between the families of everyone else. We didn't speak to each other the next three days. Mama was crying a lot, and would take pills.
We were cut in half.
Eventually Mama stopped having to take pills after three years. I was now seventeen, I had graduated early and one of the top people in my class. I would be going to medical school in a year, on full scholarship. I am popular with the boys at school as well, being the keyboard player of the school's pop band, Girls Dead Monster, where we get together on weekends to rehearse songs and then performs on random concerts.
My dad and I spent the year together, we became really close after years of being pushed apart. When it was time for me to get on the plane, we hugged and we cried.
I was away for two years, kept in contact with Mama. But a week after I turned twenty, she died of heart problems.
I cried when I heard the news, I cried and cried and cried until my eyes were dry.
Now there was just one.
At the funeral there were people I didn't really know, the only one I recognized was Hisako, who was in GDM as a guitarist.
We got along, and we fell in love too, when Miyuki the drummer and Shiori the bassist came open to the audience (and to us too) as lesbians, we did the same thing.
On March 1st 201X onwards... it's just Hisako and me.