When Kaidou Suzu was four years old, she saw her father hit her mother for the first time.
It was the middle of November, she had been silently coloring in the dark scribbles that were her drawings in her dimly-lit room. The poorly-sealed window letting in drafts of cold air that nipped at her arms, making her clutch the thin blanket draped around her even tighter. The small nubs of her worn-down crayons were held stiffly by frozen fingers, making her lines messier.
But it had been drilled into her that they didn't have the money to afford new crayons or thicker blankets or sealed insulation. Her mother always spent time sewing patches into year-old clothes, hoping that the color difference was minimal enough that nobody would notice.
Most of the time, Suzu spent her days alone in the shabby house. Her father was gone most of the day(and most of the night, and when he got home she always heard hushed arguments and slamming doors), and her mother sewed stuffed animals and collected old newspaper coupons and would try to sell them every Wednesday. Sometimes, she would disappear for days at a time, and all Suzu would wake up to was a note on the counter that she couldn't read, next to a bowl of cold food. On luckier days, she would be allowed to lay on her mother's lap as she worked, dozing off to daydreams as she hummed a soft melody. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, after she's been startled awake by shouting and the loud thuds of items hitting the floor, her mother would come into her room and delicately curl up next to her. Kissing the top of her head while she pretended to sleep.
Suzu used to be less lonely. In a time before, her mother used to take her to one of their neighbor's house when she was busy. Her small hand clutched by a slack grip as she looked around her environment curiously, headed on a road she had began to see as familiar, to the home of a nice young woman, newly out of high school, that lived nearby. That was a time when her mother was still cheery and pointed out different sights to her and let her pick one of the small blue flowers that pushed their heads out from the cracks in the sidewalk. That was when there was someone who would read books to her while her mother was busy, and let her play with the two types of children's toys they had.
"You're such a smart little girl!" Her temporary caretaker would coo as Suzu watched her intently show off a picture book. She didn't understand a word, but she liked listening to the syllables wash over her ears and stare at pictures of things she had never seen before. The relaxed form of her babysitter, the reassuring smile, and the crinkle of her eyes made Suzu try to tilt her lips up in a wobbly imitation.
But that was a year or so ago. Before the nice lady that smelled like vanilla and felt like someone infinitely important moved out of the run-down neighborhood with a wave and a gentle hug, leaving only a small, warm teddy bear as a reminder of her presence.
Maybe even back then, Suzu started to understand loss and love. But all she can do now is stare into the stitched eyes of the bear and clutch it to her chest, wishing that the warm would be enough, and trying not to long for a time when she had more freedom.
In the summers, at least she could run around in the yard outside. Cloud gaze and watch the occasional butterfly and pull weeds from the overgrown grass. But in the winter, she was confined to the relative safety of the house. There was nothing else to do, then, other than tuck herself into corners when she got sick of her room, and wishing that the weather was warmer.
That certain night, she was drawn by the screaming. Bored and innocently lured by the commotion in the usual curiosity of children, Suzu shuffled out of her room and stood near the kitchen entrance, listening to the shrieks and howls of her arguing parents. When she dared to look peek in, she witnessed her mother smashing one of the few glass cups they owned on the floor, and then her father's hand, raised in anger.
And that was when she meekly closed her eyes and ran back to her room, closing the door with a soft creak and curling up in the corner of her closet as she tried to drown out the frenzied crashes and choke back the rising horror in her lungs.
It was the first time she felt fear towards her father. The one she never sees.
When Kaidou Suzu was five years old, she and her mother lived in a small apartment on the east side of a different city.
She remembers how one day her mother simply threw all of her belongings in a bag(her pillow, her blanket, her small collection of art that she had used the last bits of her coloring materials on) and took her hand to lead her away.
For the first time in a while, nervously clutching her bear to her chest, Suzu went outside the broken, wooden gates of her home, the ones that had always served as a sort of invisible barrier from her and the outside world.
They arrived at a shady-looking apartment complex after walking for almost three hours. Slumping onto the ground, Suzu pulled tiredly at her shoes(that were worn and a little too tight and dug into her heels and pinched the sides of her feet) as her mom unlocking the rusted doorknob of an off-color door, pushing it in to reveal an empty room. Prompted to go in first, Suzu stepped forward and instantly felt the old tatami that had been left crumple under her soft step. The musty smell of rot and mold hit her nose, and she whimpered, backing up to clutch the fabric of her mother's skirt.
Along the top of the wall crept something dark, and other stains decorated the wall.
That night, she slept on the floor, tucked into a familiar warmth and watching as shadows danced in the dark, and wondering if this is what it felt like to lay in a grave.
It wasn't until the third day that she realized this was her new reality. Her new home.
She was suffocating.
Every morning her mother left before she woke up and every night she came back late into the night, weary and dark-eyed. She was gone all week, struggling to make a living as a single mother without a college degree. Suzu spent her days lonely at home, but that wasn't anything new. What was new was the even more cramped space. The fact that her mom locked her in with a store-bought sandwich for the day, and told her not to go outside. The fact she could only peer at the sun through a window and bask in it's warm light surrounded by the overwhelming heat of no air conditioning and old, old bamboo mats. That her only excitement was the twittering of birds at dawn, birds she watched flit and twirl with a hidden envy. Occasionally, some landed on the trees a distance away.
After about three weeks, her mom finally managed to buy a futon, so they didn't have to roll around on the tatami maps, which were just as hard as the floor and would leave Suzu with all sorts of aches in the morning.
It was at this time, laying upside down on the thin bedroll, getting familiar with the smothering room and staring out at the aloof blue skies, Suzu had her first imaginary friend.
His name was Kosai, a fat tree sparrow with shiny button eyes that accompanied her throughout the day. They played hide and seek, tag, made shapes out of the clouds, drew imaginary shapes into the floor(and later, on used newspapers when her mom bought her a new set of crayons), and put on tiny skits for an audience that wasn't there.
Suzu immersed herself in her own world, found a way to cope with the emptiness. To comfort herself.
Without realizing, she found herself rocking gently every time she sat down, like how her mother used to do only a year ago.
When Kaidou Suzu was six, she was sent to first grade. The kids were energetic and bright and loud, and their intensity scared her. Cooped up all day in her tiny apartment with nothing but the silence and the sounds of birds for company, the bustling children overwhelmed her.
The first day of first grade, Suzu cried for her mother. But when her mother came and Suzu turned to her with teary eyes, expecting comfort, she was faced with a grim face frown and hauled away by her arm to the outside of the school where she was slapped. As she held her burning cheek with betrayed eyes, the woman she called her mother screamed at her with wild eyes and an erratic tenseness that made Suzu flinch at her every movement.
An hour later, Suzu returned to her classroom with dull eyes and a fading red on her face and a deep sense of aching.
She never called for her mother again.
When Kaidou Suzu was eight years old, zero friends and counting, she cried herself to sleep every night and drew more within herself everyday. Children were cruel and judgemental and ridiculed anyone that wasn't like them, anyone that didn't meet their standard. They looked at her second-hand clothes with confused disdain, and stared at her tousled hair. Her awkwardness for talking to others never wore off. She could never relate to their tales of big birthday parties or spending time with older siblings, and they gave her strange looks when she tried to tell stories of how she used to play with Kosai.
But he was gone now. And she was alone.
And the children whispered behind their hands.
When Kaidou Suzu was ten years old, she was a ghost. A flimsy presence in the corner of the room, with light blue hair that fell to her shoulders, messy and uneven at where she tried to cut it herself. No one had ever heard her talk. No one had ever seen her smile.
They wrote her off as being shy and ignored her at best. They forgot that they were the ones who had isolated her in the first place.
There were still times when she passed by people in the halls, and then would do a double take. Those that were used to her appearance tried not to look at her. She knew that even then, even as a kid, the line between her and them was being drawn.
When Suzu returned to her bigger, newer apartment, she tugged off her shoes and shut herself into her pristine white room. Out of the corner of her eye, she swore she saw something on her bed, but when she turned around, nothing was there. Another mistake of the light.
Sighing, she got out her homework and set to work, ignoring the soft whispers that seemed to call her name.
The floorboards outside her bedroom door creak, and she feel a bead of sweat start to form on her brow. It's just the house, she told herself. It's the pipes groaning as they usually do.
But the tenseness never goes away. And she lays wide awake at night, starting at every shadow in her room and seeing monsters in the dark.
When Kaidou Suzu was twelve years old, she started to hear the voices. Not just ones she thought were saying random words, ones that could be passed off as the wind. These spoke in her mind, jumbled sentences and garbled instructions. One was a bit higher pitched, and it warbled in meaningless poems. It urged her, commanded her, to write down it's songs of wonderland. When she woke up in the morning, it picked at her skin, her hair, her eyes and told her to wear tape as socks. The other one, if there were even two-for all she knew every word was a difference source-had a voice like an old man going through puberty. Scratchy and fluctuating. It advised her answers to math questions that weren't even numbers, told her to pin used water bottles on her wall-it really liked the smell of burning pinecones.
They weren't unwelcome. They told her things, and she told them things. Someone who talked with her without judging. She could tell them anything and they wouldn't care.
Slowly, she fell into the ocean.
When Kaidou Suzu was thirteen, she couldn't stand sudden light. It made her vision blank out and burned into her eyes. Nowadays, she reacted badly to smells. If the kid next to her just had gym class and didn't shower good enough, the tiny scent would creep up into her brain and twist. She got nauseous easily, her head would spin. In the extremely rare chances that someone brushed against her, the feeling made her want to puke. The world would slowly dip into different colors and that sense of motion sickness fell over her. She never interacted with anyone anymore, even more than before. If anyone got close, she instantly moved away.
The noises got more annoying. The voices. Everywhere she went, even if it was the girl's bathroom and no one was around, she would hear them. Knocking, tapping, thing calling her name. Nowadays, she can't differentiate from whether the noises came from her mind or real life. And she stopped trying.
In her classes, she had trouble paying attention. When the teacher was teaching, the information seemed to go into her ears and hit a blockade before falling apart onto her desk. She physically saw the mixed jumble of words piling up on the smooth surface of her desk, but no matter how many times she tried to brush them off, they never left. She felt like there was something wrong with her. Her brain. It never seemed to retain information correctly.
On the walls, cockroaches would crawl, appearing from nowhere and everywhere. Sometimes she would see worms flying in front of her, or her eraser biting off her fingers.
Faces distort right in front of her eyes. She can't remember what her face looked like. The same song repeats nonstop in her mind, a song she's never heard before.
She doesn't notice the strange looks people start giving to her.
When Kaidou Suzu was fourteen, someone caught her talking to thin air and told a teacher. She screamed when the nurse tried to touch her, screamed when she was strapped into the emergency bed, and passed out at the sudden assault of disinfectant, hospital lights, the touch of the staff, and the screeching of the siren.
That day, while tied up in a straight jacket and shrieking at the doctor who looked more like a giant glass of melted wax than a person, Kaidou Suzu was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
(If anyone had watched Suzu long enough, they would've notice her nervous, shifting eyes. The constant tenseness in her shoulders as if afraid someone would jump out at her. The refusal to eat things she hadn't watched been made. She couldn't, didn't, hide the way she rarely responded to people, unsure if it was another delusion or reality, the times she would stare at the ceiling for long periods of time, movingly. But no one had paid attention. No one had noticed way she would smile one second and then have a look of fury the next. No one questioned her constant confusion, her state of being that seemed to float between planes of existence, her flighty, sporadic, unnatural gestures, the things she mumbled to herself that made no sense, the constantly feeling that something was not right, even to herself. Because no one bothered to care. No one bothered to look at the person they had already distinguished as separate from themselves.)
When Kaidou Suzu was fifteen, her newly rich mother moved them to a big house in another part of Japan, having become wealthy after all her hard work. She had thought that a change of view would do Suzu better, and to escape the 'bad' memories that now haunted her.
Suzu herself tried weakly to manage a new life, all the while thousands of pills coursed through her bloodstream. The voices, which had become quite demanding in the past few years, were stifled. Sometimes, she could still hear a tap on her window at night, or see a sneak of a creature sitting on her lamp, and the feeling of constantly being watched only dimmed, but she was getting better. Slowly.
For a year, she stayed at home. Her mother started to pile tutors upon her, in hopes of making up for the fifteen years in which Suzu didn't learn. Not only in maths and arts, but also in manners and speech and the weight of the expectations society will place upon her. She went to prep school, studied more than nine hours a day, and drowned herself in work.
At the age of sixteen, Suzu finally re-entered school, high school, with a paranoia of other people and memories of nightmares that lurked right beneath her conscience. She stood quietly as she was introduced as the new student, managed a small smile, and tried to ignore the pounding in her head from her medications. She went through the day politely(and normally ), and tried her best to focus on her studies, all the while pretending that there weren't people surrounding her on all sides. All interaction she gently deflected, and she tried not to stare at that single wispy cockroach right near her head, and ignored the gentle tapping on the window of the third floor, where no one would've been able to reach.
When Suzu got home, she threw herself on her bed and cried.
Then she did her homework.
It was about a month or so after she started going to school, Suzu settled down. Her life tumbled into a schedule, her surroundings new and her home filled with therapeutic smells. Every week she would go and see her psychiatrist, and Suzu felt lighter.
Her delusions never really went away, and she still had an unnatural fear that people might, just might, be reading her mind using mind control or try to poison her, but she could now recognize her own symptoms. The medication definitely took an edge off of the thoughts she has, the ones that make people inch away, and noises in the dark didn't keep her up all night anymore. But she had also taken to wrapping bandages, stark white and clean, around her wrists every morning. The pressure helped keep her grounded, and she could distract herself by idly scratching at them instead of her own skin. They served as a nice reminder, that she was still healing, and that maybe one day she wouldn't need to use supplies to make sure she was still sane.
She felt…freed. Just ever so slightly in control of her life. Able to make her own decisions, to judge what is real or not.
At her usual session, Ms. Metaru, her psychiatrist, noted her improvement.
"Yes, Kaidou-chan, you're doing very good. I think it's time we take it a step further."
A gentle reassuring smile.
"Why don't you try making some friends?"
Suzu felt her own smile crack.
Note: I decided to post this on both archiveofourown and . I'm not sure if that violates any policies, but if it does, then I'll most likely remove the fanfiction version, so you'll be able to find it on archive.
+ I'm not a professional, nor am I really familiar with schizophrenia, but I tried my best though I tweaked some aspects to make the story actually able to progress. Mental diseases are serious, and I don't mean to offend anyone if I did. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed! It was a fic from a year or two ago that I dug up and brushed off and decided to post.