The Breaking

by Rob Morris

Kenjiro Hagiwara had no idea that his life had fallen apart. This would come soon.

Young (very young) Mayu Hagiwara had a better idea of this. To be fair though, her mind was swallowed whole by a mantra she had repeated hundreds of times from the moment her enraged mother had arrived home with her. A dutiful girl as ever, she stared straight into the corner she was led into.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

The words were painful at first, and then they simply made her numb. Then Mayu began to believe them to be true. The final blow came when she began to wonder why her mother would ever tell her to say such a thing, when obviously there had never been such a baby.

Kenjiro, arriving home after seeing his worried sister-in-law from the hospital to her and his brother's home, heard Mayu's near-chant.

Later that same day, he would learn it was now merely Arika's home. But for now, he concentrated on the child that almost everyone in the family loved.

"Mayu-chan?"

Now lost in the mantra that she believed would redeem her in the eyes of Mama, Mayu did not respond and kept right on talking.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

Suspecting (rightly) what had caused this, Kenjiro went to shake his daughter out of this induced stupor, if need be.

"Don't bother her. She's finally gotten it right. A few more hours of this, and perhaps this obscene nonsense will have finally vacated her empty little skull."

Even without the pink-haired killer who had touched and harmed both their families, and many more, there was a world unheard of by these simple folk.

"I hope your brother has the sense to not try and make any more babies, or at least not with that acid-tongued woman. It's bad enough I'm forced to make our child do this, simply to free her mind of deranged thoughts of mutant babies."

This was a world of wonders, a literal multiverse of infinite possibilities. From that multiverse, one day years from then, another version of this woman, Kenjiro's wife and Mayu's mother, would visit, spending a month in a place called Maple House, also known as the Kaede-Sou.

"Maybe now that their drama - their latest drama - is done with, you can finally get back to being a more attentive husband, and keep that willful child in line."

In that case, the multiversal visitor would be a young girl, as bright and chipper and sharp as the woman native to this world was none of those things. To Mayu, she would be a briefly-held sempai, and an inspiration to never give up on a dream.

"You're fortunate I'm such a forgiving wife. I cannot fault you for aiding your brother in a time of crisis, but in this you've failed to see to your own family. It's the talk of the town-or would be if the local hens and bums had any brains to talk on anything besides heart failure conspiracies and serial killers who ride on the wind. Idiots!"

In both cases, these people would be named Shinobu Maehara. While there were some differences in time of birth and family structure, they were the same person, except they could not have been more radically different. The reasons for these differences are a story for another day. But they were stark.

"Most of the people I know wonder why I even put up with you."

Because few people could have been less true, we will call the one in this story Shin, the origin of her sister-in-law Arika's nick-name of Shinbone.

"Well? Nothing to say?"

Shin Hagiwara often stonewalled her loving and forgiving husband into stunned silence.

"Are you freaking kidding me? Are you finally, once and for all, out of your freaking mind?"

This was none of those times, nor would it be ever again.

"My brother and Arika have just had their newborn baby girl snatched out from under them, and they aren't even allowed to publicly grieve. You feud with Arika, but can't get the better of her, so you take it out on our precious girl. This, Shin, is a bad time for our family - all of us, the part that lives here, and the part that lives in my brother's home. You, who have lost your own brother and his wonderful family, must see how devastating a time this is."

Kenjiro shifted down his tone at the last second, while also painfully realizing that appealing to her late brother's memory was possibly the only connection he had left to a woman he had once seen in a light as lovely as her counterpart was seen by others in her home universe.

"You dare compare my brother and his world of stability and normalcy to the chaos your brother and his wife brought into the world and intended to inflict in the midst of our family? If you wish this marriage to continue, you had best just put those two trouble-makers aside once and for all!"

Kenjiro felt he had made a vow before Heaven to be this woman's husband, so even in his despair, he made once last effort to salvage what he now realized had perhaps never really existed. Gathering his nerve, he shoved his finger right into her face.

"No! If YOU wish this marriage to continue, you must do what everyone I've ever known has said and seek psychological help because woman, you are INSANE!"

What happened next he would remember until his dying day, yet at the time it was all a blur.

Shin completed her descent into animalistic behavior when she bit through and then swallowed his finger.

Enraged and in agony, Kenjiro slammed her in the stomach, causing her to vomit up, including his finger, which he recovered and ran off in horror and fear, also in the back of his mind worrying that his daughter might see her father killing her mother if he stayed.

A neighbor saw him run, and called for an ambulance.

At some point, he passed out.

When he awoke, a wife was standing nearby - his brother's wife, Arika. He briefly looked and saw his hand - his fully intact hand, almost fully bandaged up.

"Arika-Chan?"

He was glad she could come to see him, but worried for her condition so soon after her tragic loss. Yet her condition was far worse than he could have imagined, as was his own.

"Kenji-Kun-your brother is dead."

In a corner of the house soon to be no longer his, a little girl who was also soon facing an enormous loss chanted still, since a dutiful girl would continue until told to stop.

"There never was a baby with bluish purple hair and horns. Auntie Arika never had a baby. Mayu is wrong and bad to think so. Mayu is disobedient if she holds otherwise."

She would pass out sitting in that chair, while the mother who no longer remembered telling her to repeat those words fumed and raged over slights real but exaggerated, and some wholly imagined.

"I am in Hell. I am under assault. I am not shown my due in any quarter. I am dismissed out of turn, and I will not be dismissed."

Only the pain she wrought was not imagined, and it would merely expand in scope.