Trigger warning ;-;
The world around me was blurry. I blinked several times and shook my head, clearing away the daze I felt as my body was weak. My head spun, and for a moment, I couldn't make sense of anything. Everything sounded fuzzy, like I had been underwater, only to have a cold breeze pass by.
I looked around in search of something that would tell me where I was, but all I saw was darkness. The sounds surrounding me were faint, almost silent, but I knew I wasn't alone. I could feel it, as if someone else's presence was right behind me. I didn't dare turn around though, fearing what I would see.
My mind felt slow and dull, like I was trying to keep up with heavy rain. But even as I tried my best to understand everything happening around me, I still wasn't able to make sense of what was happening. I looked at my hands and tried to ground myself. 'Where am I?' I thought. Suddenly, a dark presence filled the empty abyss.
I looked in front of me to find an abandoned house. The house was simple, but was rotting. The windows were shattered and duct taped and the door was covered in scratch marks. I was hesitant, but walked towards the house. I realized something. The house was an exact replica of my childhood home. As I stood in front of this place that I never thought I'd go back to, I felt something grip my shoulder.
"Alana?" I looked to my left to see my brother by my side. The dark abyss transformed into a street with other neighboring houses. The sky was a pink and orange color. 'Right... I was going here with Kuragari' I said to myself.
"If you don't want to go inside, we don't have to," he said as he patted my shoulder. I smiled at him.
"I want to... I need to find out what happened to me, what happened to us," I said. We both hesitantly walked to the door and Kuragari knocked on the door, nobody answered. My heart pounded and I froze. I wasn't prepared to see my father, especially since he pawned me and my brother off to CyberCorp. There was a delay, but the door opened a crack. "What do you want?" A man's voice came through the crack in the door. It was deep and crackly, almost like a monster was speaking to me. "Hi father... it's me." I managed to speak. I could feel his presence overwhelming me, but with my brother by my side I was able to suck it up.
"Wait one minute." My father shut the door and I started to hear footsteps. Finally, the door opened fully. There, stood a tall man with ripped pants and a singlet full of cigarette burns. His beard was scruffy with grey hairs and his eyes carried the same bags they did when I was younger.
"Come in," he said as he welcomed us inside. Me and Kuragari looked at each other and walked inside. He motioned for us to sit down. Inside the house it almost looked the same. The stairs leading up to the second floor against the left wall right in front of the door, the lounge room to the right and the kitchen in front of us. There were opened pizza boxes and beer bottles all over the place.
I followed Kuragari as we sat down on the burned couch. Our father went and grabbed a beer and sat in front of us.
"Honestly thought you both would be dead by now," Our father said as he took a drink. My blood boiled as I watched him drink the bottle. "Well, we're still here," Kuragari said. "That you are." Our father placed the beer bottle on the coffee table in front of him and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.
"So, why are you here? Clearly you aren't on some annual visit," He said bluntly. I breathed deeply. "We... I came here because I want to know what happened." Our father looked at me like I was crazy.
"I pawned you off to that weird company for money, there's nothing else to it kid. You know this already," He said. I looked down.
"She's lost her memory father. She can't remember her childhood, she didn't even know I was her brother until it was told to her," Kuragari stated. My father chuckled. "It's not like you guys had a childhood to begin with." He took another swig of his drink and set it down.
"If you truly want to remember your 'childhood', look at your face," He said pointing at me. I pulled out my phone and looked at my face. There were tons of tiny scars scattered on my face, but one that went over my eye stood out. Suddenly my mind had a flashback.
"Hey... what're you doing there?" My father walked over to me. He smelt of alcohol. "Playing," I said as I held my blue rabbit. Kuragari had gone to school and had to leave me for the day as I couldn't go to school. "Playing..." He said with a scoff. He started to pace around me. "Do you know how much I've sacrificed for you?" he started to raise his voice slightly.
"Do you know what I've done to raise you useless rats?" He walked towards me slowly. "Yes..." Before I could say anything, he knocked the glass of water off the table. I watched it shatter on the ground.
"DON'T SPEAK TO ME UNLESS I TELL YOU TO!" I screamed.
"YOU DISOBEDIENT WRETCH!" He grabbed me by the neck. I couldn't breathe. His grip was so hard that I was being chocked.
He threw me across the room, my back slamming into the wall. I fell to the ground holding my neck in fear and pain. Tears streamed from my eyes as I looked up at him thinking 'what have I done wrong?'. "CRYING IS WEAK ALANA! DON'T CRY!" He yelled. I yelled back. "I'M SORRY DADDY, I'M SORRY!" He grabbed a broken beer bottle and hit me in the face with it. Blood streamed from the wound across my eye.
"DON'T SAY SORRY! YOU'RE WEAK ALANA! YOU'LL ALWAYS BE WEAK!" As he said this, the front door opened. My brother walked through the door. "Alana?" He looked around and saw me on the floor at my father's mercy. He dropped his bag and ran to me. "LEAVE HER ALONE!" He grabbed my father's arm and pulled him away. "STAY OUT OF THIS KURAGARI!" He threw Kuragari across the room. I took this as my chance to run for the front door but he grabbed me by my hood and held me up. I tried to run but couldn't. Suddenly, heard my father yell in pain. Kuragari had stuck a broken bottle into his back. My father dropped me and I ran for the door. I opened it and my brother and I ran out of the house.
"COME BACK HERE!" We didn't look back. We kept running and running till we couldn't anymore.
Kuragari held me close as we hid in an alleyway. The night was cold and my hands felt as though they were about to freeze off. The blood trickled from my wound as I cried. "It hurts Kura," I whined. "I know, we'll get you help I promise," He said reassuring me. We held each other til the sun came up.
My mind flashed back to the present. I held the scar with my hand and looked at it through my phone. "That's what happened Alana." Our father took another swig. "Deal with it," he said quite bluntly. My brother comforted me as I looked down at my knees. I took my hand off my eye and looked at my father. "You're a monster," I said. My father looked offended. "I sacrificed everything for you kids, you weren't grateful enough..." Before he said anything more I stood up.
"You don't deserve to have the privileges of being called a father," I said with rage.
"Calm down Alana," Kuragari reminded me.
"How can you tell me to calm down after what he's done?!" I started to raise my voice. Suddenly, all the memories came flooding back to me. My childhood from when I was born, to when CyberCorp took me and my brother away. I looked my father dead in his blank eyes. "He doesn't deserve to even talk to us right now!" My father sighed. "Just leave her Kuragari, she's always had a bad temper." I glared at my father, my rage growing stronger by the second.
"I have my reasons to be mad. Look at you! You sold your own kids to get money, and where did that get you?" My father looked up at me with a glare. "It obviously got you nowhere." I thought for a minute and spoke.
"You... spent it all on booze, didn't you?" he didn't respond. He just looked down at the ground. "YOU SPENT ALL OF THAT MONEY ON BOOZE DIDN'T YOU!?" I yelled at him. Kuragari stood up. "I think it's time we go," He said as he touched my shoulder. Tears streamed from my eyes as I looked at my father's lifeless eyes.
"Answer me this, Ray. Who in their right mind would sell there kids off to a sketchy organization, and then proceed to blow off all of the money on drugs and alcohol? I wouldn't be mad if you were doing well, but clearly you're still living the same life you did back then." My father stood up.
"Don't you dare use my name in vain. I am your father..." I cut him off.
"NO, YOU LISTEN TO ME, RAY! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE MY FATHER!" My father slammed his bottle on the ground. I watched it shatter and pieces flew across the room. "ENOUGH!" His voice shook the very earth we walked on.
"Get the hell out of my house," he said pointing to the door. I scoffed.
"Even now, you're still afraid to face the truth." I walked out without hesitation. I stood in the now dimly lit street as the cold wind blew through my hair. I felt the door shut as Kuragari walked towards me. He turned me around and embraced me in a hug. "I got the answers I wanted," I said as I cried in his arms.
"Don't worry, you won't have to see him ever again," Kuragari squeezed me tighter before letting me go. "Let's go, Haru texted me saying he wants us back." Kuragari grabbed my hand gently and led me to the car. We hopped in and Kuragari turned the key to start the car. He drove down the street and into the city. The car ride was silent as I looked back at everything that had happened until now.
I looked back at my life in school, my childhood, CyberCorp and the war.
'The war...' I thought to myself. I couldn't remember most of the war. All I remembered was the screams and cried of my friends dying in the war.
'What was the war even for? Why was I in that war?'
I knew I needed to find out more. But where would I start? I didn't know much, but I knew CyberCorp had something to do with it. I needed to find out what happened, and what was going to happen. We arrived at our private garage and parked the car. We walked through the forest, Salem meeting us halfway as we finally made it back to the camp. Saturn jumped at me and squeezed me tightly.
"I missed you!" Saturn said with a big smile. I smiled slightly. "I missed you too."
Haru walked over towards us. "How did it go...?" He asked. I shook my head.
"I got the answers I wanted, but I'll never talk to him ever again." He placed his hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry about it, you won't have to. Your family is here." Haru gestured towards all the villagers in our camp. I smiled.
"Yeah... this is my home."
"And forever it will be."