Come back

Chapter 19

Hiroki's P.O.V.

I watched Shania as she busied herself with making dinner. I was slightly jet lagged and wasn't hungry but she wouldn't hear about it and had decided that I needed to eat lots. I suppose that was the mommy in her, wanting to make sure I was well-fed and everything. And while I loved mommy-Shania, it was sometimes a bit annoying. Especially when you were jet lagged and just wanted to sleep. I'd normally be sleeping, or at least in bed, at this time, it was already 2am in Japan, and here I was, waiting to be fed a dinner I didn't want. I also didn't put it past Shania to try and make me go into littlespace by making something I liked when I was little and putting it in a kid plate. She was capable of doing that without my authorisation.

It's her job Hiroki.

I hushed the little voice in my brain, who was right once again, and decided to go unpack. It would avoid me whining for the billionth time that I didn't want any dinner. I was pretty sure that she wouldn't appreciate that. And I was also grateful for her caring and trying hard to take care of me even while I was sort of pushing her away and I didn't want to make her job harder. So, letting her know where I'd be if she needed anything, I went to my room and started unpacking.

I slowly took out my clothes and put them in their drawers. I then took out the couple of books I had taken and put them back in their place. I loved books, they were my passion. Books and old music. I chuckled to myself, thinking about how similar to my mom I was. We had the same taste in music and in books, and I remember that while I was still living with them, she'd often steal my books without my permission. And never give them back because "you already them Hiroki dear, you don't need them anymore". I gently put the books in their place and smiled sadly. I missed the time when I was really close with my parents and when we'd be sit together in the living room and just laugh at random things. We had partly gone back to that while I was there, but I knew that there was a part of them that never forgave me for leaving how I did. I thought about how they'd force me to go see my family that lived here, even though I didn't get along with them and barely knew their names. I sighed and sat down on my bed. Why couldn't things be easy?

Thinking about my mom made me realise that maybe I should text them to let them know that I had arrived safely. Once I had done that, I realised that maybe I should also text my therapist to let her know as well that I wouldn't be there for our next appointments, because I had gone back home.

Home.

Japan wasn't my home anymore I realised. It was my childhood home, but not my home anymore. I had made good friends here, I had my girlfriend here. I had rebuilt my life here. I had rebuilt my home here. I had left Japan because it was getting hard to live there, with all the expectations, all the pressure, and I was afraid of breaking under it once more. I shivered remembering that time. Exams were piling up, I didn't have any extracurriculars anymore so I knew that it would complicate my going to a good university like my mom wanted, I was under constant pressure from my school to do well even if I still had another two years before going to university. One thing led to another and one day I found myself walking out, a plane ticket in hand that my uncle had bought for me after I confided in him, boarding a plane to Europe. My mom refused to talk to her brother after that, and from what I knew they still didn't talk. My uncle would ask me how mom was, and I'd let him know whatever I knew, which wasn't much.

I hated myself for this, I had the feeling I had ruined our family even more. Relations weren't easy before, there had been fights and divorces but relations were mostly cordial. Now, ever since I left, some family members had sided with me, like my uncle, thus effectively cutting ties with my parents, or at least with my mom. Sometimes I wished because of that that I had stayed home and suffered in silence or found another way to deal with it. That I hadn't asked my uncle for help to go to Europe. Maybe if I had done everything on my own, things wouldn't have changed for the worse in my family. All this was my fault, and I couldn't forgive myself for that.

I had seen my uncle while in Japan and he had started crying because he was so happy to see me. He didn't really see much of the family anymore, and he didn't see his sister anymore. He used to come over to our house every other week. Now because of me he couldn't go anymore. He lived isolated because the rest of the family lived quite far from Tokyo and his job didn't give him much to go anywhere. I sighed and hugged my knees against my chest. I missed those happy times where we were a mostly happy family. Why did thins always have to worsen in life? Why couldn't we all be happy?

Why did the choices we made have unforeseeable consequences that could ruin our lives in so many ways?