Alright so I'm trying something new. I wanted to attempt to write in first person because honestly, I think it's a better way to convey emotion in a story. There are going to be a lot of different Harvest Moon characters in this. The perspectives are going to switch back and forth between Chase/Chihaya and Hikari/Molly. The story is a bit dark so if you aren't into that don't read...Anyway, please enjoy and let me know what you think! PS: I don't own Harvest Moon
"Failure, failure, you're a God damned mother fucking failure." These are the only words I can force myself to utter as I mechanically smack my head against the walls of my empty shell of a home. Life has proceeded to fuck me over yet again, leading me to believe nature takes some kind of sick twisted joy in watching me suffer. I thought maybe, just maybe that things were finally starting to look up. What a ludicrous delusion.
I'm a reliable man, good for my word and not one to break promises. However, I suffer from random bouts of sarcasm and pride myself of my eloquently sharp tongue. I should refrain, yet I just can't seem to contain that part of myself. Is it a defense mechanism? Maybe, but I'd never admit that to anyone, not even her, her, being the cause of my internal distraught. Maybe that was the cause of this inevitable downfall. I fell short as always and disappointed the person I had held so high yet again.
It's to be expected; however, at least it should be expected. First my mother and now my fiancée, or rather, ex-fiancée. She could fall off the face of the Earth, spiral into the depths of Tartarus for all I fucking care. I was weak, fooled and dare I say in love with that wretch who dares to classify herself in the same species as myself. A human wouldn't act as she had, a human would not sleep with the Mayor's son in my fucking bed. The fact that she held the audacity to even partake in such lucrative actions in my home is revolting in itself.
I can feel my eyes visibly losing light. I'm scanning the house for anything of sentimental value I could take with me, yet everything just reeks of her unwanted presence. Then again, my house is pretty hollow anyway so there's not much to inspect. Can't take my sweatshirt, it emits a revolting stench of lilies and Chamomile, a scent which seems to constantly make an appearance throughout my life. I'd rather bear it out in the snow than wear something drenched in the scent of everything I've ever loathed.
My backpack is only half full of clothing and hidden funds by the time I venture out of a place I once called home. I unintentionally gazed to the lonely expanse of sky and moon that was just overhead, noting how this seemed to be befitting company for one such as myself. It was late in the evening when I began my trek to the pier, everything was silent and the area seemed desolate of life.
"Good" managed to push its way out of my mouth, sounding more like venom than a cohesive statement. Solitude suited me, solitude became me. A person as fucked up as me didn't deserve friends didn't deserve a family and apparently sure as hell didn't deserve a wife. It's time I stopped lying to myself, pretending to be someone unbroken by what life has given me. It's time to become what I had once been and have so reluctantly given up. Fuck society, fuck my mom and dad and fuck Rin Hamaguchi. A boat has never appeared so liberating to me before.
The captain is giving me a questioning look, trying to figure out what I intend to do. Good luck, I'm an enigma, even to myself. If some elderly little ship captain can figure me out then maybe there's even more wrong with me. His beady little wearied eyes are boring into my soul and it's unnerving.
"Where you headed lad?" His voice is deep, filled with what sounded like an infinite amount of wisdom. Hell if I know where I'm going, I tell him I don't know and that as long as it's far enough away from this place I couldn't care less. He looks at me with this kind of misunderstood sadness and it pisses me off. This decrepit piece of existence thinks he can judge me, he thinks he has me figured out, huh? He tells me I'm upset, doesn't even ask, tells me what I'm feeling. I'm fuming; ready to burst out of this composed bubble I've shielded myself in for the past four years.
Alas, I contain myself once again because this isn't the place to lose it. Then it hits me, I know where I have to go. I tell him to take me to The Mainland and he looks at me funny this time. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. Take me back to where I came from, to where I belong. That little orphan from the street fought, not for food not for money but because he could. All these years I've been suppressing the desire, no the need to fuck someone up so bad that I'd possibly ended their meager excuse for an existence.
That captain must see the crazy look that I can literally feel in my eyes because he doesn't question me anymore. He turns his back on me like everyone else and starts us off. The air is impossibly cold, but I don't feel it. The only thing I can manage to process through my brain is my uncontrollable desire to kill someone, my mixed up feelings of a tainted love and hatred for Rin Hamaguchi and wondering if seeing her son like this would have gaged any sort of reaction from the hollow shell that my mother had been.
No, I laugh to myself internally. Yet even in my mind I can hear how uncertain, how expecting it sounded. No, she wouldn't have batted an eye, wouldn't have given even a minimal shit about what I have become. A mother who loved her son would have fed him, held him, taken the initiative to remove herself from that God damned fucking windowsill she'd inhabited for two years of my life and sure as hell wouldn't have tried to commit a joint suicide with her fucking six year old.
I loved my mom, she was all I had after dad left or died one of the two, he could still be alive for all I fucking know. I loved her even when she went insane. She hadn't always been that way, mind you, once upon a time there'd been a mother who kissed my forehead every night and whispered sweet nothings of dreams I would never obtain, a mom who would sing heartfelt songs of adventure and a little flower boy who fell in love with a princess, a mom who told me she loved me every day, every night, all the fucking time. It's funny how we don't really appreciate those things when we're young and naïve, but believe me I was clamoring for it when she found it much more enjoyable to occupy her time with passing images of cars flying by our window, which, funny enough is what she tried to end us with.
I remember it, thoroughly, vividly. When I'd left for school it was like any other fucking day had been, I woke up and she was still glued to the windowsill, same position and everything. I dressed myself in rank over used clothing that hadn't been washed in God knows when. The shirts barely fit me anymore and I had had to use a belt to keep my pants together. My shirt would usually be on backward or inside out because it was dark, dark because no one had paid a bill since dad disappeared. I remember going downstairs every day looking in the refrigerator and hoping by some miracle there'd be a scrap of food that I could somehow salvage for a meal.
Alas, there never was. There never was a mom waiting to take me to school, to cook me breakfast and hand me lunch, to buy me clothes that fit and to pay the bills so I wouldn't be so unbelievably cold. At school I'd reside within myself. There were no friends because I didn't know how to communicate much. My mother never uttered a word to me and she'd cut me off at a critical time of development in my childhood. Teachers didn't fuck with me and I didn't bother with them. I'm fairly certain the only reason I hadn't died back then was because I'd feed off the scraps of food the other children would discard after lunch. My meals consisted mostly of sandwich crusts, scrapped out globs of chocolate pudding and if I was lucky, maybe half a bag of a snack bag.
That day when I'd returned home I literally almost pissed myself. There was my mom after two years of silence, standing by the door in all her sickly skinny dirty looking glory. I remembered once thinking my mother was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She'd had such exuberant violet tinted eyes that had been so full of vigor. Her hair was always so well kept and soft, she was put together so well and I'd assumed my father had swelled with pride at the fact that she was his. Yet when I had looked at her then she looked unimaginably frail, like if I had so much as touched her she would shatter into a million pieces never to be rebuilt again.
When she spoke her first words there had been no smile, no appearance of guilt, just a raspy dying squeak of a voice asking if I wanted to go for a ride with her. Now remember I was still young, a lot less naïve but nevertheless still young and I wanted to trust in my mother. I remember unwanted tears streaming down my dirtied face when she grabbed my hand for the first time in years and led me out to her car. The only reason we'd still had a car or a house was because thankfully they'd been paid off before dad left. Our little black car was lacking gas and I remember watching my mother sit there staring like she couldn't possibly comprehend why the car wasn't working. It looked like I was losing her again so thinking quickly I had thrown myself out of the car and scoured the garage for a container of gas. Thankfully, it sat on a lone shelf covered in cob webs and spiders, but I didn't care. I grabbed it and put it where I thought gas went and low and behold our car started.
We rode off in silence and it still sickens me how I had gotten so much contentment from her accompanied silence. Not a 'how have you been?' or 'I'm sorry for forgetting you', but a hollow, empty quiet. I remember looking out the window at all the cars passing us by, some with lone passengers and others with happy families chatting away at each other. This was enough I had thought. This car ride was enough to give me happiness. Such a sickening feeling of ease, I have to hold the bile down just remembering how happy I had been at that very moment.
"Chihaya, do you love me?" The way her voice retained a permanent monotone would leave one to believe she was more robotic than human, yet I had smiled at her and nodded as vigorously as I could. Yes mommy, I love you. I love you more than the broken remnants of toys I so luckily still owned, more than the wind that blew relentlessly through our broken home and chilled me to the bone every fucking night and more than all the times I had put a blanket over your frail body on said nights to ensure you didn't die from the cold. Yes, in that moment I had loved you more than anything, mom.
That second, that millisecond that I saw it will forever be etched into my mind. No amount of drugs or alcohol could ever make me forget the way my mother smiled. That heart wrenching curl of her lips was enough to make angels cry and bring the Gods to their knees, it was so painfully beautiful I almost missed the small 'mama loves you too' fall from her broken lips as she swerved our car into the opposite lane. It happened too fast and I don't remember feeling any pain, just endless amounts of light engulfing me.
Hues of gold filtered in from every crevice of the room and I'd felt blinded by such a pure type of presence. My mother was gone and I was just floating by myself through a vast emptiness of light. The beauty didn't last however as I began to feel my body plummeting back down to Earth. It hit me like the weight of the world and my eyes shot open. Pain, immense indescribable amounts of pain were all I felt aside from the cold stares of strangers engulfed in white. I remember seeing their lips move and to this day I don't know exactly what they were saying.
Everything that preceded this event would inevitably set me up to be the person I am today. They'd told me mom hadn't made it, that she'd gotten the blunt of the force and died on impact. I'd taken it in silence, no tears, no screams of anguish, just an eerily understanding silence. When they realized I was now alone, well, maybe I had family but they sure as hell didn't give a shit, anyway they'd shoved me out of there as soon as they could and sent me to an orphanage.
You know those movies with the stereotypical run down orphanages where everyone treats the children like slaves and monsters but in the end the evil deeds are uncovered and the demonic staff is jailed and the children are given to families who love them? Imagine somewhere like that, except erase the part about retribution being served and being saved. I can tell you right now I was never saved, let alone looked at as more than an abomination to humanity.
I was beaten more times than I could count, harassed by staff and children alike and left to no one but myself. Yet, as sad as it sounds I liked it that way. I liked that I was getting my ass kicked, I deserved it. I killed my mom, it had to have been me, right? I'd turned into a bit of a pyro during my time in the orphanage, okay…Maybe more than a little bit. Note how I said 'during my time in the orphanage' meaning I hadn't been there very long. Not because I was adopted, but because I burned that fucker to the ground. I'm sure they evacuated everyone in time, at least I think they did…Whatever, anyway so I burned it and ran. It wasn't very hard considering that I had nothing to my name. I was Hirose Chihaya a fourteen year old orphaned little miscreant who was meant to have died with his mother. I was reduced to living on the streets and just trying to live. Live for what? I don't know, I still don't know the answer but I sure as hell took it seriously.
By the time I was sixteen I'd hit my all time low. I'd murdered another child who had been just like me, living on the streets just trying to scrape by. He'd tried stealing my food while I'd fallen into a restless sleep and that just couldn't happen. It was a dog eat dog world out there and sometimes that dog would have to go for blood just to make it another day. You know you're gone when it doesn't even faze you as his eyes bore right into your soul, asking why. I'd left him there and simply moved to another location.
I'd had means of getting extra cash, though it wasn't a very honest way of making it by. Long story short, I got into the drug business. Not just the weak stuff either but the heavy kind of this may or may not kill you shit. Even worse I'd gotten myself into it too. Hell, I still can fondly recall how much I could repress and forget when I was hopped up on anything and everything.
Being in that line of business never ends well though, as I'm sure anyone with a smidge of intelligence could have figured out. I was jumped out of nowhere, beaten, bruised and left for dead yet again. I really thought my life had finally started coming to a close. I vaguely remember dragging myself in whatever direction I felt would get me away from danger in which case I ended up at the beach. As I laid on the sandy shore off the path that led into the city I remember the flood of tears that I couldn't contain anymore. For God's sake I was sixteen, sixteen fucking years old and I'd killed a child. I'd lost my family, burned an orphanage to the ground, sold and distributed drugs just so I could live. Who lived that way? Me, I lived that way and it was all I'd ever fucking known. I laid there and cried about everything, I'd imagined the family I would have had if my father had remained with us. I imagined the school I would still be in and the friends I could have had if all this fucking shit hadn't happened. I screamed at nothing in particular and gripped at my heart that I wasn't even sure existed anymore. I screamed for my mom, I screamed for my life and I screamed for the devil that I had become.
Again, things are fuzzy but I remember limping over to a small boat that had been tied to the pier. I wanted to sleep forever and forget the life I led. So I had huddled myself into the corner of that boat and I forgot. I pretended I was someone else, someone who had parents, someone with friends and someone who wouldn't stoop to the lowest of the low just to make it. For the first time in years I smiled. It wasn't malevolent; it was pure and childish as I portrayed a new life in my head. I remember dreaming of an average life with everything a child could have wanted and I slept soundly for the first time in a while.
When I woke up however something was wrong. Aside from the numbing pain I felt throughout my body I noticed that I wasn't where I had been. This beach was more pristine, polished and untouched. There was an undeniable calm that filtered through the breeze and it left me in a state of serenity. For once everything was quiet… This island was where I had spent the next five years of my life. The island of Castanet was a beautifully designed Grecian type town with endless windmills and pale paved walkways that could take you anywhere.
I remember stumbling into town in the dead of night, rising from the sand like a being of hell. I had walked miles, miles, and trailed remnants of my bloodied war through my travels. I'd stopped when I had reached a seemingly dead end in the town's mining district. I'm smiling to myself already, I can feel it. For you see, it was at this moment that I met my one and only friend in the world. I must have scared the shit out of him though, I'm pretty sure I did. I was exhausted, tired, dirtied and weary from the life that had no doubt aged me. I felt everything come crashing down on me at that moment and I knew I couldn't walk anymore. Running on pure adrenaline I stumbled toward the nearest home I saw, it had seemed to be a carpentry of sorts. I peered in through the window and low and behold there he was, sleeping like the idiot he is in the most moronic position. I'm fairly certain even in my time of need I had still managed to cock a brow at him. I believe my hearing was starting to leave me due to the fact that I remember hitting his window but I don't recall the sound it made.
Sure enough it'd been loud enough; his reaction to my presence was rather comical. He'd fallen out of his bed, looked up at me, fell over again and then he slowly pulled himself up to make eye contact with me. I must have been a sight because as soon as he saw me he'd made the most overdone, obnoxious gaping face I'd ever seen. My vision was beginning to blur at this point and I only recall vaguely seeing a flash of blue streak out of my peripheral before I was gone.
Let me take a moment to say that I hate everyone now, everyone except Luke. Yeah, that's his name in case you were wondering. Luke Morrison, a loud, obnoxious and as I learned later, foreigner. Up until that point in my life all the people I'd ever met had been cold and cynical shells of human beings. There was no care, no kindness, just a bleak and endless void of hatred. Not Luke though, my God I remember waking up to this guy bawling his eyes out at my bed side at the town's local doctor's office. Didn't even know me yet but he was crying for my sake. Of course me being the animalistic ass I am I'd freaked out when he startled blabbering at me that he was so happy that I was okay and blah blah.
I'd run away after that. Yep, weak little just had the shit beaten out of him Chihaya bolted out of that clinic faster than a Godless man slams the door to a Jehovah Witness. I ran in the opposite direction that I had went the night before and ended up in a deep thicket of trees and other greenery. I honestly don't know why I had run away like that at the time. Maybe I was scared? Who knows, anyway I found myself situated on a log and I just cried. Jesus, remembering this part of my life makes me feel like a fucking pansy. Note that I don't cry like this anymore. I'd been content to cry all alone but leave it to my noble soon to be best friend to know where to find me. He had come up to me and sat on the other end of the log I had been occupying and stared at me for long, long, extremely uncomfortable amount of time until finally he'd just uttered four simple little words that unleashed me from my binds: "Just let it go."
And so I did. I let it all go. I told him about the happy family I'd once had, the mother who once wore dresses and sang pretty songs of love and didn't leave her son for dead. I told him of all the nights I'd lie awake wondering if this was the night it'd all come to an end. I told him about how she tried to kill us, the orphanage and how I just fucking scorched it. My murder, drug addiction and deals and how I ended up here. He listened to every word I said and never made any comment. No judgment was given no I understand because he knew he most certainly did not fucking understand because no one ever could. Just a firm hand planted on my shoulder telling me my future wasn't set in stone and I could change my destiny.
This was the moment that set us up for the friendship we still have, or had I guess considering I'm not sure if he'll forgive me for the things I'm about to do. Alas, after that his family took me in for a while and I'd introduced myself to the town. Not as Hirose Chihaya, the child of nothing but as a lie. I lied to each and every one of the townspeople. I was an orphan, but I'd been taken in by my grandparents and raised in a loving home, yet I'd wanted independence and had come here to find it. Why was I hurt? I'd fallen along the way. They'd believed it, and for a time so did I. It's always easier to believe in a beautiful lie than in a harsh unforgiving reality.
Three years went by and I was nineteen. I'd managed to move out of Luke's house and live on my own. The manager of the town's local bar hired me as a chef. This little facet of me has been highly unknown but seeing as how I'd been brought up I'd had to make whatever I could to survive. Mainly after the orphanage I'd started cooking things on open fires in the alleyways. So, not to brag but I'd gotten pretty good at fashioning up some decent food. My lie of a life was turning into reality and everything was going perfect for once, yet we all know things aren't perfect forever. I'm about to lose my composure again as I delve into the subject of Rin fucking Hamaguchi. Now, that's not her real middle name but it sure as hell could have been.
Rin was fairly young when she'd moved to Castanet, about eighteen at the time if I remember correctly. She had answered some ad the mayor had put out for a personal concubine for his son…Not really, forgive my humor. She was actually there to start a ranch or something. She'd mentioned to me something about how her father had a farm while she grew up, leaving me to wonder why she couldn't have just stayed there instead of shoving her grubby little excuse for an existence into mine. She'd come to the bar every other night and get wasted off the puny little cocktails we offered. I remember quite clearly how she would patronize me whenever she had the opportunity. My God, she questioned my odd violet eyes, the shade of my hair and my fairly tall height every day. She pissed me off and it got real bad as time went by. You see I could have freaked out on her but I felt it wouldn't have been very good for the image I portrayed. However, after dealing with her snide remarks for six long months I'd had enough. I remember following her as she toddled home one night after a particularly large quantity of alcohol. It had been about midnight and no one would be around to witness me murder her with words, yet when I approached her…Well I definitely hadn't been expecting what came after.
See, this was the fucking moment I should have realized she was a loose whore. I turned her around; she looked me up and down, told me she thought I was hot and proceeded to make out with me. Keep in mind the only conversations we'd ever had were snarky little verbal brawls yet there she was sucking my face like she'd loved me- wait let me rephrase, wanted to fuck me like we would have died at any second. Yeah I'm putting it down now, yet I am a man. At the time I was pretty fine with it. One thing led to another and she ended up coming home with me and we fucked around all night. Now, she wasn't my first but I don't really like talking about my sexual escapades…
I remember waking up the next morning to a freaking note saying she'd had a good time with me and was happy to have a boyfriend like me. What the actual fuck right? What is it with women thinking as soon as you fuck them you're automatically committed to them? I should have been able to get out of it right? Wrong, very wrong. She had told everyone we were together. Luke basically broke down when he found out, he'd known how much I despised her. So, there wasn't exactly much I could have done considering my predicament…I went to her later that day after the endless showers of congratulations and nearly beat her. I would never lay a hand on a woman but my God I had been so tempted to back then. I told her I didn't want to date her, that I didn't even know her and quite frankly I had disliked her.
It didn't take long for the water works to erupt, and when I say erupt I mean erupted like a fucking volcano. She made me feel guiltier than anyone beside my mother had ever made me feel and long story short…I agreed to date her. At first it was real bad, I ignored her most of the time and didn't really want to participate in dates or any of that jazz…Yet eventually I guess she started to grow on me. She never went into her past, so I can't validate this but the way she looked at me looked so similar…Like how I had looked at my mother when I had just wanted her to love me. Call me a pansy or whatever but I think the fact that she reminded me so much of myself made me fall for her. I remembered how much it hurt, how traumatizing it had been to so desperately want love yet not receive it. Eventually I'd even learned she had lost her mother too…
We had a lot in common. It hadn't been enough however and it leads us back to where I am right now. I can't even recall how much time has passed since I began to recall my entire life, but I can see the city coming up over the horizon. I'm getting nervous and I can feel the acid in my stomach acting up just at the sight of where I was born. I haven't been here in years…The ship captain takes our boat to the dock and once we are firmly attached to land I take my first step back into the past. With a deep breath and a corrupted gaze I take in the nostalgic scene, everything feels the same. The air is still polluted, the color I had been seeing in life is receding and I'm feeling… Like my old self. With the thoughts of my past returning, old anger rebuilding and all my pain resurfacing I mutter words only I can hear.
"My name is Hirose Chihaya, twenty-one years old and I'm gone."