I rise like one with the water, a sleek creature breaking into the air. A newborn, I gasp my first breaths. I – drowned and frozen, trapped under the surface of the black water – am alive. How long has it been since I perched on the edge of the lake? I glisten with wetness like the scales of a fish, faded white as the first fallings of snow.
My eyes turn their gaze before me as I straighten. The kimono I wear clings heavily, chafing against me like pine needles on bare feet. My skin is cold beneath the sodden material; but it is a comforting chill, shielding me from harm. What... what happened? I should be stiff and curled in death, as an abandoned chick in its egg. My unseeing eyes should be towards the impossible sky, straining even to the end to breach the shell of the water.
I relax despite my confusion. The water, though nearly to the point of ice, is warm on my chilly skin. It soothes my troubled mind.
Why has she done this to me? My own mother left me to drown. She purposely made me wear this heavy kimono in the hopes that when I stepped into the pool, its weight would drag me to darkness. Have I really been such a disappointment as a daughter? Are all my efforts to bridge the distance between us for nothing? I am the ideal child, unwavering in my care and devotion. I am the one who tends her broken mind and heart with my company and words. Summoning all my love and all my knowledge, I have sacrificed the years that could have been spent learning the skills of a woman.
What… what have I done wrong? Has she no idea of how much I had done for her? Or has she simply never cared after Father and Brother broke through the ice? Mother blames me for their deaths. I know this because she screams it at me each time she sees me.
Worthless, ignorant, pathetic, weak child that I am, I know I am not responsible. Back when it happened, Father had taken Brother and me along to hunt the fish under the ice. I hung back on the bank, watching them, when the frozen water cracked beneath their feet. Brother disappeared immediately, but Father clung to the side of the gaping crevice. He told me to stay where I was until help came, then my tears blurred my vision. When it returned there was nothing but the thin whistle of the wind and my father's discarded spear on the ice fields.
How could… anger fills me and I clench my fists. How could a child of seven cause that? She points the finger of blame at me for something no-one could have foreseen. She refuses to feed me, hits me; she has made me bleed more than once, because of an accident. What loving mother would do that?
Or… maybe, she has never loved me at all. A heavy feeling in my chest makes me want to cry, want to feel upset, anything, but all I wish for is to repay her back in terror and despair. And after that… I will never let anyone near again. No matter who they are, I will guard myself completely. It is twisted love which makes Mother hold tightly to the drowned deceased, is it not? It is twisted love which guides her abuse and her venomous words, is it not? Then I will never care for another person. The power of the water, the energy of the lake, will serve as my guide, my protector and my companion.
Then you, Mother, will be the first that I wipe from the face of the earth. You and your torturous affection. These years that I spent by your side taught me that love is cruel, that it pushes people beyond endurance to the bitter loneliness of madness.
And then… then, I will never be lonely again.