Father hates that girl- hates my sister. I can see it in how he looks at her, a little sad, a little wistful, but mostly angry.
He looks at everyone like that, but I think he has a special one for her. It's in the eyes, you see.
The servants say that I'm wrong, that he cares for us equally. They're wrong, though. He's angry because it's her fault that Mother died, that the uncle I will never really know died. That she's the reason I don't have a little brother.
Nurse says that it was just a hard pregnancy, like the first two but worse. The groundskeeper says that's true, but it was really the kidnapping that did her in. That she was never really the same after that, and that the birthing was just too much too soon for both of them after it. They talk, the Branch Houses, when they think we can't hear them.
Learning what they were saying was my first practical exercise in lip-reading and using our gift.
The only one that never really says anything is Cousin Neji. At least he knows why his father died, even if it was because the Council was content to hand us over to Cloud. At least he remembers his father. I don't remember Mother, not really, and nobody will talk about her because it makes Father worse.
Neji never talks to us at all, if he can avoid it, or even has anything to do with us. Some bodyguard.
Father is so hard, so strict. It is because he is the Clan Head, because he is the Family's public face. I see other fathers sometimes, and wonder- if Mother had been alive, would he be more like them? Would he laugh, would he cheer us on?
Other times, I see what men do to their families, to themselves, and I am thankful that he is how he is. That if he is crushed by despair, at least he has the Family to cling to, to make his purpose. At those times, I thank the innumerable gods that he is not like those men.
If I beat that girl, if I prove myself worthy to become Clan Head, will he smile at me? Will he praise me? Tell me that I have made him proud?
That, I think, is my fondest wish. But it is so unlikely to happen that I must focus on other, more achievable goals. Perfecting the tea ceremony, maybe, or perhaps wiping Cloud off the face of the world.