Mirrored

Chapter 17 - Kaya

New Chapter!!!📣📣📣

Warning: Ideas of suicidal thoughts and psychological/physical abuse are explored within this chapter. Please take care of yourselves and read what is most comfortable for you.

Just a little note for the eldest daughter's and son's: Your efforts in helping raise your younger siblings never truly go unnoticed. They see it and it might not feel like it, but everything you do try and make your siblings life better than yours is appreciated. You are worthy of praise and admiration. ❤

Without further ado, enjoy your reading time. 🪻🌷🪻
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I am a differen person to different people.

Annoying to one. Talented to another. Quiet to a few. Unknown to a lot.

But who am I, to me?

- Unknown

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Despite the clear weather and radiant sunlight beaming through, it was anything but bright in this four-walled room. Like opium drugs I was certain she was on, it smelt of dying and despair - any and all semblance of hope destroyed, and it felt much too familiar for my liking. All I wanted to do from the second I stepped foot into this room was to get out - immediately.

My feet halts after entering a few inches inside, rejecting the idea to go in any further.

"You came." My mother's raspy voice called as she tried to prop herself up into a sitting position, failing miserably. From the time I've seen her last in the home, she lost more weight, her face emaciated, her skin paper like and fragile.

My legs and arms move before my head, assisting her to sit up right, her skin cold against mine. She heaves in a deep breath her hands planted against her chest, shaking slightly, exhausted from that move alone.

"You said you wanted to talk." I said while grabbing a chair.

"I did." She whispered, her face not meeting mine even as I take a seat to meet her eye level. "There is something you should know."

"What did you want to tell me?"

"I didn't know how to feel when I had you. A part of me was overjoyed that you were born safe and healthy. Just grateful because I had a few miscarriage before I had you." She sighs like the thought pains her. "But a part of me hated you."

Because I was a girl and not a male heir like my father wanted - the unsaid words rang in my head.

"He said you are nothing more than a failed experiment. And I was his greatest disappointment." She mumbled, staring at the windows.

Her words send dull blades digging into my chest, brutally forcing its way through, but it was nothing new. We both knew that. When Kenji died, my father's hand got harsher, faster. It reached deeper and my mother wasn't safe either. We all came out with bruises larger than our own hands. Split lips, burnt skin, broken bones.

I wasn't just a failure in my existence. I was defective. Like a tech gadget that works but never performs well enough. Useless in it's design, a waste product to be dumped or used for the wrong reasons.

"I knew he slept around with other women." She jumps in thought, her voice flat and devoid emotions like anger or jealousy that would normally lace those words. "But none of them were important to him even if they produced kids. Most of them were girls anyway. And yet, he doted on one of them. So much so he went out of his way to meet them as often as he could and even took care of the children she produced."