Hey guys! Hope you like this chapter! It's kinda depressing though... DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT WAS TO WRITE THIS THING?

Disclaimer~ I do not own Harvest Moon

Chapter 4: The Past

"Mom…she still doted on me," Phillip started, "I got everything that I could want, except getting to visit you and Dad. She never missed you two. She made it seem like the four of us had never been together. And that, in a way, it drove her crazy.

"Two years ago, Mom went insane. Aunt Claire mentioned you, and Mom had a meltdown. Aunt Claire got scared and called the hospital. Mom went into rehab after that, and came out last year. She started to live with Aunt Claire. At that time, I came back here to start the farm and I met Nori. And, well, the rest was history."

Phillip sighed, as if he had had such a painful life these past years. How ignorant. But that was the part that I liked about him. Damn, I hated these feelings.

He smiled at me weakly. "Your turn,"

I sighed, "Alright. Dad started to drink more and more after they got divorced. For most of the time that I saw him; he was either drunk or high on drugs. Our neighbors found out quickly, and let me stay with them whenever I needed to. But I knew that I couldn't depend on them forever, so I started learning that kind of thing on my own. Dad didn't know that I'd learnt to cook until I was around 13. When he found out though, he got mad at me and started yelling, saying stuff like I had made him waste a bunch of his gambling money for his food when I could've been cooking for him all this time.

"After that, he began to physically abuse me to make me hear and serve his every need. There was some psychological abuse too, but after a while, you get used to it. But when I turned 15, he began to look at me while I changed, in the way that a man would look at his prey. That really scared me, but I already knew that there was no changing anything he wanted, so I had to stay like that.

"Throughout it all, Dad let me have one thing that I wanted. He let me dance. Dancing was my way out from the world, the thing that stopped me from doing something bad to myself. But Dad got us into a car accident, a couple weeks after my 15th birthday, and the doctor told me that I couldn't dance anymore. I think you heard about what happened after that. I started cutting and Dad now had even more money to spend on the bar and his gambling.

"I came to the point where I attempted suicide. I tried to hang myself, but the neighbors found my nearly unconscious and brought me to the hospital. The doctor talked to Dad about sending me to rehab, but Dad refused. It would've cost him too much money. But I went there anyway. The neighborhood and government would fund me for the costs of rehab. I stayed there until half a year ago. They let me out, saying I was fine, and telling me to go home. So I did.

"Later on the night I came back, Dad came back from a bar, muttering something about debt and money. And when he saw me, everything was torn to shreds. I thought that Dad would've gotten better. But he'd only gotten worse."

My breathing slowly got shallower, and tears began to prick in the corners of my eyes. Phillip looked at me and came over to me, pulling me towards him. He rocked me back and forth in his lap, murmuring comforting words all the while. "You don't have to say it right away, take your time."

I shook my head, sniffling, and continued the story "Dad…almost raped me that night. I was so scared, Phillip, I was so scared. The neighbors had heard me scream, and they called the police on him. He died the next day due to Drug Overdose. I wanted to start a new life after that, so I came back here."

"I see…" Phillip murmured into my hair, hugging me tight against him, "You don't have to worry anymore though. I'm here. I'll be here until you're sick and tired of seeing me."

And before I knew it, I'd dozed off in Phillip's arms.

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