Butterfly kisses and Flower petal wishes

Reminiscence Pt. 2

"There we go." Yasuo cooed, "Just lay on me."

"You'd think being so young would have caused issues between my parents, but honestly from what little I can remember they were a happy pair. I'm sure they fought and struggled, but they were happy." Yayoi hummed to herself as she tried to recall her childhood. "My father worked at a small textile shop, and my mom stayed at home to raise me. We weren't the most well-off family, but..." Smiling sadly, Yayoi stared off into the city.

"One, two, three, woah~" Yayoi squealed as her father threw her into the air before catching her, "One, two, three, woah~" She laughed louder as her father repeated the process her mother happily staring at her husband and daughter as the small family of three picnics on the beach.

"We were a happy family, a close family, until..."

Yayoi heard the sound of glass breaking, looking up from her drawing on the bedroom floor she sat on. A small five-year-old Yayoi running from her small bedroom to check on her mother. "Mami...?" She stopped outside their small home's kitchen, her mother's face pale and running with tears as a broken plate laid beside her, their home's landline receiver on the ground. "Mami... What's wrong?"

"My father... was a sickly man. He didn't have the best constitution and was prone to getting sick a lot. That was actually how they met, him being a patient of our family's clinic..." Yayoi smiled bitterly as she looked down at the passersby down below.

A small Yayoi watched as her mother wailed and cried by her father's side, his face covered by a white cloth. "We're sorry." The doctor quietly muttered, "It seems he had caught a cold that had turned into pneumonia. We tried everything we could."

"My father got sick one day, and passed away..."

"Mami...?" Yayoi stared at her mother longly, the woman's eyes almost seeming permanently stained with silent tears as she quietly stared at the shrine for her late husband.

The house was cold and unkempt, young Yayoi scared and unsure. Their happy home and family were no more.

Bitterly, Yayoi's hands clutched the album close to her chest, "For a time... my mother was... ill... she wasn't all there really... if she wasn't crying and struggling to take care of me... She--"

Yayoi frowned as her mother cuddled her close, "Oh look at you!" Reina cooed, "You look so handsome, just like your papa Yayoi-chan. Do you like it?"

Yayoi frowned at this, staring at the male yukata her mother had made her. Yet as she looked up at her mother's green eyes, she almost whimpered as she noticed the trance-like state her mother was in as she looked down at her. Yayoi's head dropped down as she quietly lied to her, "Yes..."

"She struggled for a time... Since I was small, I'd always resembled my father... I think... back then... to cope... Something broke in her... and she tried pushing the image of my father... on me."

"Yayoi~" Reina cooed while gesturing for her daughter to come close. "Here~" She put a small hair clip into her daughter's hair to push her bangs away from her daughter's eyes. "There, much better. Wouldn't want my little girl to trip and fall."

"From time to time I wasn't her little girl... I was her little boy...."

"When you grow up. I just know you'll be as beautiful as your papa." Reina joyfully smiled, her daughter now dressed in boy clothes clutching tightly to the shorts she wore as she struggled to not cry at the trance-like look her mother gazed at her with.

"I didn't like what my mother was doing. I loved my father... as a child I might have even wanted to be like him as I grew up... He was my idol, my hero, but..." She was silent for a second before she wet her lips. "I was still a girl. I still liked what other girls liked. It hurt when a part of me was being denied, it confused me to all hell. I didn't mind playing with boys' stuff or even dressing like one here and there... but... The longer my mother had episodes, the harder it became... for me to accept them when another part of me was being pushed aside."