Author's Note: Expanded project out of vignette by the same name, thirty excuses why Yamato and Mimi failed at love.

The title is a referrence to Deaf Havana's "Caro Padre".

The men in my family are cursed.

The place was almost silent, the remnants of their screaming match lingering in the air. His breathing was hitched, then flat as he breathed in the poison in his cigarettes as though he intended to have them kill him right there. Hers, on the other hand, was ragged, constantly interrupted by half-smothered sobs that made him breathe in faster, for a longer time.

"I can't do this anymore," she finally murmured, her face buried in her hands. Yamato turned his face away, releasing a steady stream of smoke and refusing to meet her eye.

"I tried," he croaked out. "You can't possibly know how much…"

Mimi looked up. There were tearstreaks down her cheeks and her mascara had long since betrayed her. Her bottom lip trembled, pale, as she spoke.

"It shouldn't have been so difficult," she told him, gathering fists of her skirt. "You always made it sound like it was such an effort to love me," her eyes burned the back of his neck, "—like I should be grateful you even tried."

His gaze slipped towards her, cold and resentful. She was just trying to hurt him now, he was sure of it. Knowing it did nothing to assuage him; it still bothered him that even when he could see her doing it, it still worked. There was a moment, before he spoke, where he imagined Mimi blonder, older, carrying a small child — and he wondered if this was what Hiroaki had felt when Natsuko broke his heart.

"It wasn't like that. I thought you knew."

"I was never important enough," she continued, as though she hadn't heard him, but he had long given up on trying to make her listen. Perhaps that had been part of the problem.

"You matter to me, Mimi," he murmured, but the hollow tone in his voice couldn't even convince himself.

She paused near the door, looking at him over her shoulder. "That's not enough, Yamato. You of all people should know that."

Once, his father had told him not to fall in love with her. She reminds me too much of your mother, he had said.

Yamato watched her leave. The cigarette spent itself between his fingers and he took one last drag before tossing it over the rail, knowing in his heart it couldn't have ended any other way.

We were doomed from the start.