Just Look into It

59. At Her Side

Ryo tried to turn on a show or some music to play quietly in the background. It didn't take her long to shut it off, feeling on edge in the silence but unable to focus with the noise. 

She didn't want to think about anything. 

Even so, everything she tried to do seemed to fail. Her thoughts always started wandering, questions popping up in her head that made her wonder if she had made the right choice. Was there a right choice to have made? 

With nothing else to do, she did every chore that she could think off. She swept and mopped. She vacuumed the bedrooms and anywhere else there was carpet. She checked the expiration dates on foods and made a list of things they were running low on. She reorganized closets and cabinets, making sure everything was nothing had gone missing. She made herself a small lunch when she started feeling faint but quickly got back to wiping down all surfaces and dusting anything she could reach. She organized Yuu's art supplies even.

When there was nothing else she could think of doing, she steeled herself and entered the master bedroom with the boxes she had saved from moving into the house. 

It felt weird to be packing things away. 

She had sent him off with a good number of his old things, though there was still plenty left in the room. There was no point keeping it around. She would save some of the more expensive or nicer things in case Yuu could grow into them, but even that could be boxed away. 

It was time to move on. 

There was no point in hanging onto the past, she figured. 

She pulled out jeans and shirts, making sure they were all neatly folded and clean, fitting as many as she could in each box. Trying to keep some sense of organization, there were small piles and half-filled boxes scattered around her. 

Ryo pulled open one of the bottom drawers, noticing that something was catching and stopping it from opening fully. After a few frustrating tries to dislodge whatever it was, she finally was able to pull it out. It was some sort of book, with a blank, dark red cover. Curious, she flipped open to the first page. 

It was a photo album. 

There weren't many photos inside, only the first five or so pages in use. She stared at the photos of her parents, though many years younger. It seemed like they were newly-weds. There was two single pictures of infants, each carefully marked with a name and date. 

The brunette quickly shut the album and put it down, pulling her knees to her chest as she stared it down. 

"It's just photos," she told herself, climbing to her feet. Her eyes scanned the miniature maze she had created for herself. The images flashed in her eyes as she started to close boxes and stack them up against the wall. 

When had they stopped taking photos?

She reached up to tighten her ponytail, blinking the tears away. A snap hit her ears as her hair fell on her shoulders and a light pain hit her hand from the now broken elastic. She froze with her hands up behind her head, biting down on her lip. Her arms fell limply at her sides. 

"Damnit, " she muttered. "Damnit!"

She kicked over the box of shirts at her side, spilling them across the floor. Frustrated, she grabbed at her hair and let her head fall back, swallowing harshly as she tried to stop herself from crying. 

When had her father stopped caring about what happened to his children? 

Would he even visit his wife in the hospital?

She quickly dropped down, closing her eyes as she hid her head between her knees. It hurt. It hurt a lot. When she had decided to dig into what had happened to her father while he was in prison, she didn't expect to find reports detailing his mental state. She didn't expect to read about how little he cared for his children aside from the free home they were providing.