all-american :: jotaro x reader

piece 4 :: father's day

It was June. The cicadas buzzed. The sun shone on the building, and Father's Day was just around the corner.

Though she had only recently come to America, she was trying her best to assimilate, even if she didn't understand why her classmates' fathers needed a celebration.

She knew vaguely about the concept of Father's Day - it's basically a second birthday for dads, akin to Mother's Day. Knowing such, though she couldn't fully grasp the concept, the decided to join her classmates in making a card anyways.

The room smelled of second grade - crayons and  hand sanitizer, more notably crayons. She put her back into the card, carefully inking - well, waxing out each line, each curve on her letters. When she couldn't write in english, she wrote hiragana.

The result was a painfully blue card, the front sporting a lopsided drawing of her and her father holding hands, the sun stuck to the corner of the page. The inside contained the following:

Dear dad,
Thank for being my dad. I love you very much. I am happy I am with you. Mom is also very happy. I love you.
-Y/N

It was finished, a masterpiece in her eyes. The only thing that was left to do was to take it home and savor the reaction.
---
Father's day dropped downwards slowly, like honey, and the wait was agonizing for her. She just couldn't wait for her father to se the card, read it, and like presto, all her qualities would be redeemed. She ached to please her father almost as much as she ached for the actual day.

The day finally came, and she eagerly waited at the kitchen table, awaiting her father's return from work. Though she wanted to give it to him right away in the morning, she would have sacrificed an amount of sleep she couldn't have fathomed and decided the afternoon would be a better deal.

The wait, too, was agonizing.

The clock slowly moved hour to hour - 2PM grew to 3PM, the sun set a little lower, her mom got a little farther in the housework, and she sat there, legs dangling from the chair in her little California apartment.

The hours grew. And yet, she sat and waited.

Her mother asked her to leave the table, yet she refused. Eventually she gave up and let the poor child sit and wait.

Surely, she'd soon be sore, her mother thought as she served her a plate of dinner, the chair her husband usually occupied still empty. Even she was getting a little worried, the time he was supposed to walk home far behind them.

The phone presented no relief, either - though she dialed his number, the line stayed dead. And her daughter was still waiting.

6PM grew to 8PM. Still no father.

The girl waited at the table with heavy eyelids, and eventually found herself having to jerk herself away every so often.

She decided on staying at the table, yet moved the card aside as to not taint it with drool. And with 9PM turning to 10PM, she fell asleep.

At 12AM, her father burst through the door.

She fluttered her eyelids yet did not wake.

He smelled strongly of alcohol, and her mother didn't know there were more than a few purple markings under his uniform. A poorly wiped lipstick stain sat on his neck.

Her mother ran to greet him, worried, yet slightly angry - only to be pushed off. "Get off me, b...bitch," drawled her father. Her mother stumbled backwards, then gestured at her sleeping daughter. "She's been waiting since two to give you that card, I hope you know."

The father groaned and walked over to his daughter, yanking the card from her hand. She again stirred, yet did not wake.

The father threw open the card, disregarding the drawing she had worked so hard on the front, and turned his attention to the writing. Though his vision was blurred, he scoffed, hitting the card with the back of his hand. "I can't even read the shhhit," he gargled. He then proceeded to throw the card on the floor.

The mother watched as it floated to the floor, her husband pushing past her aggressively to make for the bedroom and pass out, succumbing to yet another hangover. She picked it up, delicately, and set it on the table, her eyes tearing up seeing all the work her daughter did - as well was the genuine message - go to waste.

The girl was carried to bed that night.
---
She returned to school, a popular topic among the students being what had happened over father's day.

Though she couldn't quite tell what they were saying, their facial expressions spoke of their fathers loving the gifts, and the word "brunch" being thrown around a few times. The word was odd to her - alien in a sense, but it was fun to say at least, letting it sit awkwardly on her tongue.

"Do they have dads in Japan?"

She looked up from her desk at a few girls standing around her. They repeated their question, slower this time - "Do. They. Have. Dads. In Japan?"

She knew what the word dad meant, so she answered in her best English - "I have Dad."

They laughed at her awkward pronunciation and she felt small. "So what did your dad say?"

Their beady eyes spit on her, expecting a response to be able to throw back at her. She tried again. "Dad was busy."

"Sounds like someone's dad doesn't love them!" The girls exclaimed, the three of them giggling obnoxiously, few others joining in. She couldn't tell what the sentence meant completely, but yet again their expressions made fun of her.

But she knew that they were right in some sense. She never saw her father come home, and he certainly didn't say anything about the card this morning.

They kept on giggling, the lot of them noticing her drawing backwards in shame and making apparent rude remarks, she could tell from the looks on their faces.

As they ate away at her, she wanted to scream. She just didn't know how to scream in English.