Best Mistake

04 | sirens

hustling for the good life,
never thought i'd meet you here

When I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror and find a bruise that remains true to the heart of my family's legacy. I take a few minutes studying the pigments of it, the lilac and bice blue that is meant to be my face, the potency of a little champagne tint to manifest later in its short lifetime. The same champagne that had fattened my father's tongue when he said he's sorry for hurting me, and when I said are you really sorry? and he said he's really sorry and I said thank you for being really sorry, which he smiled morosely at while I inspected the wound, and for the first time, the bathroom's dead silent except for his soft, breathless apologies, which I think he actually meant as he carefully reached to hug me, though later I stood in the corner and told him actually, I'd like it if he talked to me first before hitting me again. He thought I was joking, and when he realized I wasn't, his face darkened and he said he doesn't want to hit me at all. This was the first time he looked at me, at the canvas and palette he established in the spur of the moment as I stood facing him, like he wasn't just ashamed. Like he was measuring the length of his action. And while I appreciated his self-awareness, it made me sick to my stomach.

———

At the dining table, the air is still. In front of me, something is different. Asahina Ukyo's eyes, which, because of the seat arrangement, I can never seem to avoid, move quickly from me. The rest of the siblings are too alert, engaged in a quiet murmur. Then Ema comes in with a cake. This would be cause to celebrate, except now they know that up until last night my father had sufficiently hidden from them his predisposition to violence. I see her face, her downcast eyes and blanched cheeks, and I turn away and look into the polished plate, which reflects a near flawless cover-up of my bruised skin. It occurs to me that I should've concealed it less, but more pressing is the reality in which my father and his wife just happen to be having the sort of arguments that spill into other rooms, because I'm certain they are above miscommunications and round-about solutions to their individual mistakes.

I eavesdrop on them, which in an open space is not eavesdropping so much as accepting your silent role in everyone's interaction, and they are arguing about last night's error in judgement, my father doing this thing where he prefaces his hushed disagreements with affirmations like yes, I understand you, and yes, that is valid, like he wants to desperately communicate that his penchant for cruelty is just a mirage of something else. This is actually much more unsettling than the lack of doubt or initial softness as his wide, hard knuckles swung towards me. Their argument is polite and inorganic, my father's effort so much more apparent than his wife's, and in the middle of a digression about his difficult experience with an estranged daughter, he says, why was she performing, what were you thinking, and that tells me all I need to know, so I excuse myself from the table and go to the room with the piano. I look at the iron plate and run my fingers through the dust collecting on its surface, noting how harmless it looks in the wispy morning light. When I glance up, Asahina Hikaru is leaning against the wall arch and motions for me to come closer. He takes my face in his hand and tells me not to move.

"He hit you last night," he says, not looking for an answer, just stating what he knows. I meet his eyes and try to not flinch as his thumb presses on a particularly contused part of the skin. "None of us were going to see this again."

"What?"

"This barbarity," he says, a little contrite, like he wishes he could've prevented it. "I thought it's something we have left in the past—a skeleton in the closet." He tilts my head to get a better look, and behind his eyes, I see myself fractured into pieces. Suddenly it feels painful to be this malleable, to be this convenient, as he looks at me and sees that I am just my father's mistake put aside for another time. "It's frightening to think that this kind of anger lingers your whole life."