I was screwed up. But that was fine, many people were screwed up. What was unforgivable was that I had screwed up my own son. My dad would've been considered harsh back in the day, but blatantly abusive now. When I broke a dish, he broke another one over my head. If I didn't stop crying, he'd give me a reason to cry more.

Once in the wintertime, I talked back to my mother. In retrospect, I was being a brat about something so simple as washing a dish, but I was tired, lazy, and nestled under a kotatsu. My mother made to scold me but didn't have the chance. My father dragged me from underneath the blanketed table by my hair and had thrown me outside into the snow. Before I was allowed to come back inside he made me shovel the entire driveway and path to the house. I had been in a tracksuit without shoes, by the end of the ordeal my toes had begun to go black and the vestiges of a nasty cough had returned.

I can quite honestly say looking back that my father was a rotten bastard. He wanted a child, not for the sake of love, but for legacy and as a future investment to take care of him later. He always excused the abuse as lessons, ways to make sure that I grew up "right". His father had treated him worse than he treated me, if anything, according to him, he was taking it easy on me.

Allegedly his father had talked about how his father was worse than he was. When he had died after a car accident about a year before I had Hachiman, I had promised that my son wouldn't have to grow up the way that I did.

I would never raise a hand to him and would be the father that I never had. I had tried my best but things never go quite according to plan, how to hell was I supposed to know that we were going to create an absolute genius?

For a while, after Hachiman was born things were normal, money was tight. Between Emi's law school loans, our house payment, my father's funeral, and then her mother's funeral. Our budget was pushed almost to the point of breaking. Baby formula was expensive and Hachiman's stomach was a bottomless pit.

All in all, he was quite the happy baby, and we pinched pennies and cut coupons but we were okay. My wife worked as well and we dropped him off at a local daycare. We never took vacations but our nonexistent savings slowly began to grow.

Then Komachi was born, the night we had found out my wife sobbed into my shoulder. Where would we find the money or time to care for another child? We wanted the best for our children obviously, but there was no way that I could afford to provide it for them. It seemed like no sooner than after birth my wife was kissing the children on their heads and then back to working on her budget laptop.

Of course around that time, Hachiman began to really show his intelligence. He spoke with a childish babble, but he sounded more like a high schooler with the body of a toddler than he did a child. My wife and the woman who ran the daycare were absolutely ecstatic; all I can remember is her looking at me with the widest smile I'd ever seen and tears of joy, then saying "Look at our son, he's going to do amazing things."

That elation soon turned to despair when we saw the price of gifted daycares. No one offered scholarships even though they all admitted that he was remarkably advanced for his age. Once again my wife was in tears, we were both anguished at the thought of squandering Hachiman's brilliance.

By the next morning my wife had resolved herself that if we couldn't afford to give Hachiman a good education, we would do what we could with what we had. She set about teaching him to read and he took to it like a fish to water.

I suppose that was the beginning of the end in terms of a normal family dynamic. His rate of reading seemed to compound to the point where everytime that I watched him read I was sure that he was just flipping through the pages, until, inevitably I asked him about what he was reading and he could recite it line for line. He had soon finished everything that our house had to offer and was soon making regular trips with Emi to the public library to sit at a table and read a pile of books bigger than he was.

This was also around the time when we started to leave him with more responsibilities. Emi got a call for an impromptu meeting with a client, and I wouldn't be back for two hours. No problem, just let Hachiman use the microwave. Most important rule, no metal.

He handled responsibilities with ease and so we gave him more of them. It made our lives more manageable and let us get a half-decent goodnight's sleep. The need for money overwhelmed Emi and me, and Hachiman was a godsend long before he got wrapped up in the law firm. Soon he was pushing Komachi to daycare in her stroller and then walking himself to kindergarten. It felt like I had blinked and I no longer knew my son, he spoke like an adult and thought like one too. In many ways, he made me uncomfortable when we spoke, like something was wrong with me and he could see it.

But being uncomfortable around him was hardly an issue. I was gone constantly, working for the promotion so that I could provide more for my children. Being around Komachi was easy she was friendly, happy, and most importantly normal. I hated myself for feeling that around my son but I did. Being with him left shivers along my spine.

Life again went on, for years he learned and took care of his little sister. Despite how I felt about him he was undeniably devoted to caring for his sister, then, he went from a smart child to the most brilliant legal mind the world had ever seen.

My wife was emailing him cases and he was crafting intricate arguments. Money no longer became an issue, but I kept on working, how could I call myself a father if I leeched off of the success of my son? He decided to transfer to Shuuchin and I was thrilled, he would have everything that he possibly needed for his mind to grow.

From what little I knew, he was doing very well there. Until he transferred out, when Emi and I confronted him about it, he blew us off, treating us like an afterthought. I lost it, to see my own son throw away his future on a whim, and I hit him.

Immediately after, I stopped. My wife said something but I hardly heard it, I was filled with deep shame and regret for what I'd just done. The way he stared at me was the way I had stared at my father like I was an enemy to be fought against an impediment to happiness and peace.

I tried to stay away from home, I couldn't bear the self-hatred that I felt every time I saw him. I knew that he didn't want to see me and I tried to give him that. Putting aside my desire to reconcile once and for all.

That was until Komachi tried to defend Hachiman against us. At that moment I knew that things between us had to be mended. Awkwardness be damned the apology couldn't be avoided, I would have to say it and he would have to listen to it.

We apologized to him but it went as well as you expect, he nodded and left.

We figured we'd give him time to ruminate on things instead of pushing him. But then he almost died. The first night when we'd all gone to see him and I saw my son, my only son hooked up to half a dozen machines. A ventilator keeps him breathing, and other machines keeping him fed, hydrated, and eliminating waste.

I cried that night, cried for my son, cried for my daughter, and cried for my wife who had almost thrown up after hearing that his heart had stopped beating. When we heard that he'd woken up, all we wanted to do was rush over there. Treat him like our beloved son and hold him.

I was the one who stopped my wife, despite her protests I knew that us being there would only stress him out. So we waited. We waited 26 painstaking hours for him to come home to us. At some point, my wife fell asleep completely worn out from the days of worry. When Komachi texted that he was on his way back so did I, that relief made things worse.

I wonder what kind of monsters we looked like, not meeting our son at the door after he almost died. I didn't want to know what he thought of us now.

I don't think that I could bear it.

~/~

I may not be the worst mother in history, but I was still a terrible one. I had let my son take on too much responsibility, then I had let him into the legal world.

I thought for a while that he was happy. Every time that he achieved miraculous results, he seemed so happy. Though looking back on it, he only seemed happy after I showed that I was happy.

He was my little darling son. I had felt so lucky as a mother to have a son that I could really connect with. Sure, I might not have talked about the stress of living paycheck to paycheck with him, but he was never bratty in the ways that kids could be.

When I was home late or didn't have time to play with him; he would always say "I understand." What an awesome son. He would take care of his sister and topped his class constantly.

He was even the reason that my marriage stayed together. Early on after Komachi was born, he started caring for her and himself independently. He allowed Eicchi and me to sleep a little more, and after an 18-hour workday that made all the difference.

The truth was that I had been so close to leaving Eicchi and taking the kids with me. The stress of working constantly, barely sleeping, and having almost no money, weighed on me. I had barely started grieving my mother when I found out that I was pregnant with Komachi. But my little Hachiman stepped up.

In many ways, he was my rock when Eicchi was gone. When my father died, he was seven and Komachi was five. We couldn't afford to both stop working so Eicchi had stayed behind and I had taken the kids with me for lack of a better option.

Between having to clean out and prepare to sell my family home, the sneering looks of people when I said that Eicchi wasn't here, and receiving the guests I was so close to breaking. I was about to give the memorial address, unprepared but out of time.

Before I could stand up and make a fool out of myself, Hachiman grabbed my hand and said that he would do it instead. I was anxious and relieved as my son took the stage instead of me. My fears were addressed when he began his speech with eloquence. "My grandfather was an honorable soul. Until the moment that he passed, he lived by a code, even when it was inconvenient. Especially when it was inconvenient, did he choose integrity over what was easy." He went on to give a somewhat clumsy (compared to how silver-tongued he became) address that first had the audience laugh, but finally when it was over cry.

Again, he couldn't do it all. No matter how smart he was, he was just a kid; but he did enough to help me keep my head above water. I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't eased my burden. When I relayed all this to my husband he seemed perturbed more than invigorated, but I chalked it up to exhaustion.

Then my Hachiman started his new career as a legal consultant. My beautiful son this time took on the lion's share of the burden. He saved me once more, and with his help, became higher up on the ladder than my boss who once said that "as a woman, you've hit your brain's maximum capacity." Nothing has ever felt better, except maybe giving birth to my son.

These all contributed to why he was my favorite child. He excelled because that's who he was, and he didn't need me to tell him good job. Whereas I had to make a whole big deal every time that Komachi succeeded so that she wouldn't feel neglected.

Komachi was the one that would whine when we would miss an event of hers whereas my darling Hachiman would simply say that he wished us well. He also took care of his sister and the gratitude was unspoken but he was so smart that he felt it.

Then he struck out on his own in the legal world. It was time, he had helped me reach a senior partner position and had been working independently of me for some time now. I was so proud, I told him that I expected nothing less than success and he smiled back. We always were on the same page.

I offered him a nod when he got into Shuuchin because I never expected differently. He nodded back, communicating the same. He was so exceptional that it really wasn't a big deal. Just like when he won a case and I said, "that's nice" we both understood how exceptional I knew that he was. Just like how I didn't nag him like most mothers did to show how much I trusted him.

When my husband slapped him, I was appalled but Hachiman once again impressed me. He didn't flinch or cry; he just left. I should've called him back or something. Something to let him know what I was thinking or feeling but I was scared. Scared of what he might say or what he might do. He had more than enough money to jet off somewhere and never look back. So I thought it might be more prudent to let our bond regrow more organically than to insert more emotion into such a volatile situation.

Then came Komachi's lecture to us. Suddenly each of those moments flashed before me from another perspective. Never telling my son that I'm proud of him or that I love him. I knew all these things. But did he know? He was brilliant, but he wasn't a mind reader. From a child's perspective was I just some cold bitch who could never spare a minute for her son, but could always find a few for her daughter?

We apologized and all my worst fears were realized when he didn't laugh it off. He instead looked shell-shocked like everything that he believed to be true had been proven false.

My husband and I had agreed to not put pressure on him. If he was going to forgive us then he would do so in his own time. Giving him space but showing support was the fine line that we had to walk. We had started staying home more, spending more time with our children. When he wasn't around Komachi took to it like a duck to water, naturally if a little awkwardly at first. But when he was present any time that we spent seemed to stress him and by extension her.

That's the only reason that I agreed to let him wake up to his sister and not us. That and hearing that he had died. That my child might have left this world thinking that his parents didn't love him. It hurt more than anything and everything that I had ever experienced. I don't think that I slept a wink in those seventy-two hours between when he was admitted to the hospital and when I heard he was set for discharge.

I loved my son, I had known it from the moment that he was born.

Now, I had to make sure that he knew it.

(A/N): Before you guys flame me for excusing abuse remember this is the parents' perspective on their past, just like 8man their view is biased. This chapter ended up being way more of a walk down memory lane than I intended it to be. I know that it was a low-action and wordy chapter but I felt that I needed the entire chapter to showcase

1) the Hikigaya parents' perspective of their faults and failings

2) their perspective of Hachiman

3) showcase that 8man is an unreliable narrator. He thinks that he understands everything and everyone easily but he doesn't. This leads to him acting off of untrue assumptions just like the rest of us mortals.

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