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IT WAS IN THE SECOND GRADE, thin dark stockings and polished ebony shoes soaked to the bone with mud. One small child, dull and dreary, hidden beneath the scalp by a head of thick lilac hair, stood before a wall; Her fingers dripped with fragmentations of crystal raindrops, falling into the pristine carpet of her father's study, balled into minuscule fists of chipped nails and gnwaed skin.
The Wall; Minami Chizue's father was a stubborn man, strict as the stick he slammed into the ground, straight-laced with all emotions other than anger. The man more often than not let his fury consume him, sweet eyes turned cold at the sight of any displeasure. His displeasure was the child he was forced to call daughter; Minami Chizue was his biggest regret.
A small thing, seven years old — almost eight — and still afraid of the shadows before her father's weary eyes, teeth rickety and old from their workings over her bleeding lips. Chizue stood, a mess of ghostly smiles and torn knees, to face her father's steel tongue. The bows on her hair, symbols of sweet youth, wilted into streams of sagging ribbon, pinks and blues against the shock of lilac hair.
"Again." He commanded power, burnt and bloody, but power nonetheless, voice deep and gravelly, and Chizue had learned long ago that if there was any sound close to hell, it would be the sound of her father's voice.
The shoulders holding up her head trembled viciously, aching as her head bowed deeper, closer to the floor, closer to the stench of expensive perfume and incense intermingling with the salty touch of a rain's soft embrace against Minami Chizue's soft damp cheeks. Whether from the downpour outside or from her father's crude bite, no one outside the closed door would (or could) testify otherwise.
Chizue lifted her head a fragment of a degree, eyes scanning the face of the man she called Father. He held nothing but loveless contempt and hatred in the depths of his shadowed eyes, cobalt blue beneath the harsh contrasts of the overhead light.
Takeo took her father's face; Every semblance down to the pin-straight navy hair and lanky frame, but Minami Chizue had her father's cold, condescending eyes. Her older brother was lucky in that aspect. His warm brown eyes — traits of their mother — counterbalanced the young features of their father as a child, but Chizue was forever stuck with the cold gaze of her father every time she dared look in the mirror.
"You disappoint me, Chizue."
Meek and useless, out of breath and desperate, Chizue scrambled to beg for her father's mercy with the palms of her hands on his carpet floor, fingers tightly etched against it in hopes that she would tear everything apart in that god-forsaken room.
