Summary: I knew that humans are delicate glass figurines. So, I thought that if I fell from somewhere as high as the heavens, everything would be over because I'd break into a million of pieces. Then, I found out that you never really stop falling and you will continue to fall, until you forget why you fell in the first place.
Tag(s): OC, character has no prior knowledge of TG.
7. I Am
"How is school, Hima-chan?" asked not-mother as she does the thing I like the most; she cards her fingers through my hair while I lay on her lap.
"Fine." I respond simply as I let the feeling of comfort sink into me.
"I made two..." Huh. What am I supposed to call them? But, I suppose, since we've been acquainted and formed a somewhat close relationship now... "Friends."
After all, that's what 'friends' are, right?
Not-mother smiles at me, her pink lips pulled upwards like a natural curve of a road upwards a mountain. She is pleasantly happy. I don't know why.
"That's great. Are they from your class?" She is genuinely curious when she inquires me on these sort of mundane things. It's nice to know she doesn't do these things out of some sense of misplaced obligation, but cares what I am up to. "What's their names?"
Once the comfortable feeling fully sinks in, I can't find the will in me to keep my eyes open. It was too much effort to do so anyways.
"No, they're not. They're brothers, separated by a year." I answer her. "Their names are a secret." Just because she asked doesn't mean I have to tell her every single detail.
She doesn't force my mouth and hands to reveal everything I own and that is one of my greatest reliefs since falling into oblivion.
Instead, she does the thing again, where she smiles so brightly that I cannot find a flaw or something that mars it. If I had to put perfection into a single action, this was it. My eyes may not be open now, not looking at her but the darkness underneath my eyelids — I can still feel it. When she smiles, I feel the warmth wrapping itself around me. I feel the light radiating off of her. The darkness is slowly stripped away piece by piece, replaced with a world of wonder and brightness that the sun cannot imitate. Unlike the sun, it does not burn and is soothing like the first chill of winter. All of it is happening right now as she simply lifts the corner of her lips, pulling the muscles and skin of her mouth to form something naturally stunning.
Sometimes, I can't help but just stay still and wonder what I've ever done to be able to have someone who can handle a heavy but fragile glass figurine, especially when I was convinced that I was going to the bad place mother told me about many times, the place where rotten eggs go and burn for all eternity. Just like how I can simply feel, I can still hear my mother's wretched sobs that escaped her lips, remembering the little slips of skin peeling off and dried blood that was covered by lipstick during the day and thin twigs of fingers wrapping themselves around my neck like a disastrously beautiful wreath meant to fit a small head.
Those were the nights where she was plagued by gripping nightmares, hopeful what-ifs and drinks meant for the damned.
["I should'ha let you... hic... die when they told me you were a... hic... pa... parasite in my womb. I h-hate... hic... you so so so soooo... much. Should'ha let them take you out like the stupid... hic... fuckin'... tumor you are. Should've listened to them when they said I would regret it."
"I-I-I do, lots and lots. So much regret and w-whatever did I do to deserve this?"
"Maybe he... hic... would'ha luh.. l-loved me if he didn't... hic know I had a part of him in me... because he was the... hic... original and he was all I needed."
"I w-wanted to love you, I really... hic... did. I s-swear. Every night I read a story... hic... sang lullabies and lotsa other things... many things... 'cause you were half of him and me..."
"But you... nothin' but eh.. a... parasite..."]
I gripped not-mother's skirt tighter, remembering the days when I wondered endlessly and worriedly, what did I ever do to mother, to make her loathe me so. Why she couldn't stand looking at me without her face twisting and why she often pretended I didn't exist when she didn't need me in her delusional world. Why could she not understand that I loved her and that nothing mattered more to me than her.
She had unintentionally conditioned me to avoid any reflective surface, because it was a cruel remembrance that it was due to how I look that she couldn't even look at her own daughter straight in the eye. That I was helpless to change the looks I was given since birth to make her able to say her affection out loud without flinching, bursting into tears or frazzled into a raging fit.
"You know, Hima-chan..." not-mother starts and I am startled out of my thoughts as she brings her free hand to gently pry my fingers off her skirt. I wince slightly, noticing the wrinkles my tight grip left behind. At least it's easily fixed with ironing.
"Your hair and your eyes are like your father's." She suddenly changes the topic, leaving me clueless at the abruptness of it. I am unsure where this was going. "He had wavy brown hair and eyes like the color of a clear sea. He always looked like get knew everything about you, because a clear sea holds the reflection of anyone who looks into it."
In terms of personality, she sometimes made remarks about how I was almost a carbon copy of my father whenever I did something that unknowingly reminded her of him, especially when I had his wavy hair and clear blue eyes.
According to her, he was mostly quiet, not speaking when it was unnecessary and did the best he could when it came to matters that were important or that he was serious about. He was also a no nonsense man who prioritized punctuality, apparently something that was the only reason that not-mother was able to easily follow through my demand of being on time when it came to picking me up from school. She also said that he never once did forget their anniversary and was an all around hardworking man.
But I wouldn't really know, as I've never met him before. The little things I do know about him come from not-mother, who mentions him occasionally and if she felt like it, she would tell me about him. But it's not like she goes out her way to make me learn about him because not-mother didn't put any pictures of home around the house, so I didn't know what he looked like either. He was just a faceless existence that contributed to my making, nothing more, nothing less.
Physically speaking however, I took more after her, who was naturally on the slight side and pale.
Her eyes were a warm brown shade, like soil touched by sunlight and her hair was straight and silky, like finely spun black thread. She didn't really have a curvaceous figure, but you could easily tell that she was a grown and independent woman. The only thing no one would notice at first glance is the fact that she was married and a mother. You see, she has been told by many that she looks like she's in her early twenties but she is in fact going in her late thirties to early forties.
Unlike mother who relied on shadowy eyes, apple red lips and the slow flutters of her thick, long eyelashes with various calculated quirks and moves, not-mother was an all around natural beauty and had a smile so warm that it felt like the nicest hug in the world but without the physical embrace actually happening.
I think it's rather ironic that this time, the components and pieces that make up my existence have been switched. I was no longer the physical reminder of the unknown man my mother could never choose to either hate or love solely (a man with hair touched by sunlight and warm chocolate eyes with a smile so deceptive that he had my mother's heart captured instantly, as she had told me many times), but an afterimage of the man not-mother loves so dearly and genuinely (the man of simple features who had not-mother's heart captured, with his own heart in exchange).
I am not a doll made from a desire to replace the original, to satisfy an obsession born from dreams and mania but their child, merely a child.
How strange, as I was so used to being mother's object of unhealthy fixation and ire, so used to her mirrored self. One side affectionate and the other frightening, with no definite knowledge to which is the reflection and which is beyond said reflection. A mirror is said to show one's true self, yet I knew that for mother, both sides of her were as real as they were lies. She was either a malevolent spirit waiting to devour your soul in the guise of an angel straight from God's domain or someone who has the face of a demon but a heart of gold.
["You are the fruit of my love for him."]
I remember mother telling me ever so softly, her voice as sweet as dripping honey, but as poisonous as cyanide.
[Her fingers with her meticulously cut and painted red nails carded through my hair. Red was her favorite color because it reminded her of love. The love for my unknown father, the man who contributed to my making, who was absent since before my time and who did not even say goodbye when he left like the nomadic wind. Not a word or a hint. Not to my mother and not to me. The man my mother knew — the lie she desperately wished was the truth — became nothing but a figment of her imagination of her mind that was gradually deteriorating and he was nothing but a faceless figure to me. I didn't even know his name.
She hummed under her breath as she let her nails lightly scrape across my scalp in a perfect rhythm. Her touch was gentle, but I knew better even if I didn't make any move to leave her. The tender, almost deceiving caress belonged to the hands that let all the flowers die mercilessly, were unafraid to break skin and left the tight rings around that poor cat's neck.
"My love was not strong enough to make him love me fully... The fruit of my failure, you."]
"Hima-chan?" not-mother pulled me out of my thoughts when she stopped the soothing motion. Even though it stopped just now, I was already starting to miss it. "What are you thinking?"
I sat up and looked at her in the eye, unwavering.
"I am the product of your love with him."
Mother's words from so long ago, that moment which was like a distant dream now... they still ring in my head. I let them haunt me, as a reminder that I will never know if mother ever loved me — her daughter, her scratch mark on her perfect glass figurine. A reminder that I am the ugly little bit that ruined her beauty. The reason she left the world in such a terrible and sad way.
["Because you are a fruit, you easily decay into nothing... just like everything else. The world, him, my love, me."]
"You loved him just as he loved you... I am your daughter, me."
This woman, my not-mother accepted all of me.
Yet, no matter how hard I try, I still did not understand how I could love her.
I could not love her.
Even if I told her those three simple but powerful words right now, she would not accept them because she would know that I am lying.
Just as she accepted all of me, she accepted the fact that I didn't know how and couldn't love her.
. . .
She forgives me.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you—
I wish I could say them out loud.
I was more like mother than I realized.
Once again, I am helpless.
A/N: And the worst mother of the year award goes to *drumrolls* Himawari's first mother! *claps* Anyways, we have an interlude before we reach the eventual turning point (and hopefully, that certain turning point won't be pushed back with another somewhat-filler chapter, haha). Damn, that drunk monologue? That took a long time to edit. xD I hope there aren't any grammar mistakes, because some parts were written when I was half asleep. No one said bursts of inspiration had to follow normal schedules, sigh.
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