In the days after that incident, I did not speak to my mother. However, it was not resentment that sealed my lips - it was shame. I dared not look her in the eyes. Not at this strong, unyielding, woman of iron. This woman who was everything I wanted to and failed to be.

She ignored me as well. Our mornings at the breakfast table, usually spent in calm quiet, were now icy silent. I felt like a stranger in my own home. Like I was no longer part of this family.

"Shiho, you've been quiet these days," my father said to me one day, as I sat on the veranda, looking at the koi fishes swimming their lazy, aimless rounds in the pond.

"I'm always quiet," I mumbled.

He sat next to me and didn't say anything.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

He ignored the question. "What's on your mind, Shiho?"

"Nothing."

"No," he said. "You're wrong."

"What's on your mind?" he asked again.

"I said I'm fine," I replied, somewhat aggravated.

He didn't respond, just put his hand on mine.

I snatched it away. "Why are you doing this?" I whispered, trying to inject my anger and frustration into a voice that would not break the porcelain tranquillity of the house. "What do you know?"

"Come again?"

"What do you know?" I repeated again, slightly louder. "What do you know about me?"

"Shiho, you're my daughter - "

"No," I hissed back, mindful of my mother, who was only several washi screens away. "I was picked up from the streets. I'm not your daughter!"

"Shiho, please - "

My voice cracked. "It's all gone now. It's all gone - "

"Shiho, is this about the time in the Tiger?"

I blinked away tears and swallowed the lump in my throat. Harden your soul. Make your heart as steel.

"Shiho, that was just your first time. Your mother - "

"Just?" I cried. "It wasn't just anything. It was - it was - you just don't get it, do you?"

I was bawling at him now. "You don't understand anything! You think you know, but how could you? All you do is follow Mother around and do whatever she says!"

As I shouted at him, he looked back at me with that sad, passive gaze. I hated him for it then, hated him for not getting angry at me, for not shouting - hitting - anything - because then I would have had a fight on my hands. A battle. I would have had what the Nishizumi in me wanted.

"Why don't you say anything!" I said. "Why don't you ever say anything!"

The commotion had by now spread through the estate, and the paper screen on the veranda slid back to reveal my mother, whose face was terrible to behold. She strode over to me without a word, and her hand shot out like a whip, cuffing me across the face. I fell down to the ground.

"You do not speak to your father in this manner," she said.

I was silenced. Authority was speaking. A primal aura seemed to seep forth from my mother as she advanced on me with a nameless power.

"Hizuki, don't."

Both my mother and I whipped our heads to look at my father. I had no idea he could speak that way - speak like my mother, who always sounded like she had an army at her back. He looked back at me with that same, sad stare. "That's enough," he said. "This won't fix anything." And his voice was steel, carrying through the air clearly and powerfully, but devoid of any rage.

"Takeru, she - "

"I know. That's enough." My father got up and gently tugged on her sleeve. "Come away from there. I'll deal with this."

She shot me a dark look that seemed to say, this isn't over yet. But she didn't resist my father.

He slid the door shut with a click and walked back to where I was sitting. I hadn't moved from when my mother had laid me out on the wooden floor. He sat down and reached over, and I shied away from his palm. I don't know why I did that, he had never raised a hand against me before.

He touched my face, the spot where my mother's hand had struck, which tingled with residual shock. "It's gone red," he said. "I'm sorry your mother hit you, Shiho. But she loves us - you and me - she loves us very much."

"I didn't mean it," I whispered.

He smiled. "Things can be fixed, Shiho."