Halfway Between Red And Magenta

Chapter Four (Dre)

A/N: Media is our angry lil Audrey/Tsubaki. 

I get angry over the simplest of things.

Everyone says I'm so full of rage that I must have trouble containing it. But at that point, they usually make a height joke— I'm six feet— and chortle to themselves about it being in proportion. How hilarious they find themselves. Worse, they'll sometimes make a further joke.

'Aren't Chinese people supposed to be small?'

And I used to grind out, through my teeth, that I'm not Chinese, I'm half-Japanese half-English, and yes, I can speak perfect English (and also Spanish), and no, I don't watch anime. That happened so many times that I've stopped answering to it now. Maybe that's where all the rage goes: I store it up, cell by cell, until one day I'll explode like a volcano.

The kids in my school used to call me Mount Fuji. We had just watched a documentary on life in Japan for geography when they showed a clip of the landscape, and someone yelled, 'Look! It's Audrey!' whilst pointing at the mountains, and because I'm tall, because I stand out, I never could blend in again.

I never said, Audrey isn't my real name. I never said I miss home. When you move countries at eight years of age because your parents have a promotion and your father becomes an English Professor, as though he's walked straight out of Hogwarts, you don't have much choice. I've been back to Japan every summer since, to see my grandparents, and each time I feel a little more of a stranger. Each time I feel a little more Audrey than I do my real name, Tsubaki.

They told me to change my name when I arrived, an immigrant with a name that was apparently too difficult for people to grasp.

'Tissue-back-eye?' one woman had tried and failed.

'It's a silent "T",' my mother had begun, when they'd asked if I wanted a new name. A nice, English name. Wouldn't that be nice?

I picked the first one on the page. Audrey. I'd felt too ashamed that my own name wasn't good enough for this country.

'My grandmother's name,' Dad had said, clapping me fondly on the back. 'It's fate!'

Fate. Maybe another reason why I'm so angry all the time.

I took up running when I got to senior school. It seemed a good way to get rid of my excess energy, my trembling anger, and best of all, I was fast. I'd lap the boys in the class easily, and they didn't like it one bit. Mount Fuji wasn't as slow and blundering as they'd hoped.

'Why are Asians good at everything?' they would grumble.

Because you don't invite me to your parties, so I stay in and study.

Because if I don't speak your language, you won't speak mine.

Because I try hard, and you don't.

I never said that to them.

Momoko was two years old when Mum and Dad brought her here. She doesn't remember life in Japan. They didn't make her change her name— Momo is apparently easy enough— and she doesn't receive less and less mail from her friends thousands of miles away. Momo is sweet and tiny and angelic, and she wants to be a veterinarian, because she loves horses.

Here's me, entering my fifth year of medical school, and feeling like the world owes me a favour. I must be a goddamn millennial. This is our curse: our pretty little heads think we can do anything, and reality hits hard.