Love Like You: Rohan Kishibe and Daughter Reader

Bugs

A/N: if I had a nickel for every time I've uploaded a chapter around Christmas that is dark and involves death, I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot but its weird that it happened twice. (In all seriousness, this chapter involves the death of a bug, light angst, and light blood. Please read with caution if you are sensitive to any of these subjects).

(Y/n) held her breath, quiet as courage in a shy heart, eavesdropping from the front doorway on the busy footsteps overhead. Among them was the occasional murmur of Rohan thinking aloud and the scratching of furniture across the floor. Her ears scouted for the stomp of a foot, or a kick to some poor, innocent object; she called these noises 'furious footsteps'.

But his footsteps were mellow; friendly, even; nothing like the footsteps of her mother.

Concluding the safety of her situation, (Y/n) acquainted herself with Rohan's home, as he had requested while going upstairs to tidy a spare room for her stay. The cupboards in the kitchen and the side table drawers in the living room all invited her to peek inside with a creak, to which she did. The vases whistled, and (Y/n) gandered inside their gaping maws, whistling back with a newfound grin; and on the couch the pillows puffed themselves to perfection, where (Y/n) gladly rested her head while admiring the vanilla aroma lingering throughout the home.

She bothered not to move from the couch; her beaten, gutted mattress in her old home had never provided her with such comfort and warmth before. She yawned, stretched every finger and toe, and thought over every room she explored downstairs. Although each one was unique in its own way, (Y/n) couldn't help but notice that they shared one thing in common; but (Y/n) struggled to pinpoint what it was. So she took it upon herself to venture upstairs to find the answer, entering the last door on the left.

The greatness of Rohan's studio was imaginary in comparison to the reality of the full-body mirror standing directly across the room from where she stood. Silver margins with great swirling corners like clouds in Chinese art, (Y/n) wondered if the furniture was possibly forged from moonlight from the way sunlight shivered around its border; gold on silver, sunrise on the horizon of the night. She approached the mirror with hesitation greater than herself, her hands clasped tight against her chest. She tapped against its glossy surface, her finger retreating as though the mirror were forged from fire, wincing from the pain of her reflection: the little girl who the world deemed as unlovable trapped in the box.

And that was when the answer struck her like an assassin: unique as individuals yet unified as a community, every room in Rohan's house was organized, holding a definite confidence and identity. The studio was the prime example of perfection, for every book was alphabetized and the sketches looked like blocks of solid marble, that's how neatly they were stacked; (Y/n)'s finger was bare when she dragged it along the mirror's frame.

She clutched the sleeves of her undershirt so tight she unintentionally revealed a bit of her skin; she couldn't bring herself to face the bruises crawling up her arms.

"I don't belong here..." (Y/n) whispered. Her lips wobbled like a sigh striking a web; and fat, slippery tears splashed onto the ground while her hands instinctively moved to cover the bandage hiding her eye.

...

Freak.

Do you think people will want to be your friend?

You're nothing but unlovable; just accept it.

She felt every word manifest into invisible insects that crept and crawled all over herself. (Y/n) dug her fingers into her skin in hopes to itch them away, to mend the insecurities inflicted by another.

But words are overbearing when in a swarm, and to her knees she fell, hugging herself in a filmy imitation of what receiving love felt like, a desperate attempt to grasp onto something that never existed in her world. (Y/n) opened her tear-stricken eye and silently cursed out that little girl in the box: the one who wore overalls that should have been begrimed from playing in the rain, the one whose hair deserved to be as silky as fresh cream, the one who should have had two eyes to get lost in the beauties of the world.