Stay Silent

He got another email from Takahiro, much later that night. Just reading it made Hiro feel like his internal organs were spilling right out of his body.

Tadashi asked me a lot of weird questions as he took me home. Weird questions about you. I got really confused – does he think you tried to hit on me or something? Are you gay? Anyway I told him that you were my friend, like when I was a kid, and he got real quiet… and then he said something like “you should stay away from him” ……??? I don’t get it. Why would your brother say that?

Does he hate you or something? He just sorta stormed into your house today, and you were yelling a lot… I remember you were both always fighting when I was a kid. Whenever I see you together, you’re always fighting. I thought brothers were supposed to love each other… I thought I was really missing out, growing up as an only child. I really wanted a brother or a cousin or something but… Maybe siblings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be?

Um, Tadashi ended up taking your clothes – the ones you gave me. He said he’ll give them back to you later so…

(Also why do you hate Pinocchio?)

Hiro couldn’t respond. He walked from his computer to the fridge, only to find that he’d emptied it of all booze a few days ago – just in case something like this would happen, and he’d find himself not really caring anymore if his medication mixed with hard liquor.

He felt like a ticking time bomb. Ready and waiting for the slightest little nudge to go off.

-------

“Luce.”

“Hmm?”

“What do you think about… victims who become abusers.”

Hiro glanced up at her after an uncomfortable pause passed between them. She was having a long sip from her wine glass, brow furrowed. She placed the glass back down again and topped it back up from the bottle. She proffered it to him. “You’re sure you don’t want a drink?” she asked, even though he’d already declined her twice before that night.

“I’m sure,” he promised.

She shook her head disappointedly. “You’re at my bar – you may as well have just one.”

Hiro was already solely tempted from the events of the past week or so. He really didn’t need his friend to goad him on and make his resistance even harder. “No thanks.”

She grunted something that sounded like ‘fine’ as she had another drink. Even when she was done, she still didn’t answer Hiro. She stared at him staring at her, looking unnerved. “What.”

“…I… I asked you about…?” She raised her eyebrows at him. She must’ve been more than a little tipsy by now, which Hiro hoped was a good thing. “About victims who become abusers… The uh, cycle of abuse?”

“Oh,” she cried, and a look of offence suddenly replaced her look of understanding. “That bullshit. You don’t seriously believeall that stuff, do you?” she asked, exasperated, and Hiro could only blink at her because he barely knew anything about it. She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily and opened out her hands for some drunken gesticulation to go along with her explanation. “Ok, so it’s true that there’s some evidence of past sexual victimisation predicting sexually abusive behaviour, but it’s not so fucking determinate. It’s not nearly as widespread as everything thinks it is. It’s just more stupid stereotyping, fearmongering bullshit from the media – if the ‘cycle of abuse’ were real then wouldn’t there be more women perpetrators, since they make the bulk of victims? But no – that’s just not the case, even without the huge gaps and biases and what have you.”

Hiro didn’t say a word. He didn’t move except to give a slight nod every once in a while. He was staring at her intently, sitting perfectly still, silently absorbing all of the information she was throwing at him.

“I guess, for the shreds of evidence we do have, it’s mostly a guy phenomenon. Guys are more likely to externalise on the whole, and especially guys who were abused by women – they’re probably more likely to go on to be abusive assholes themselves. To get their power back. To feel in control.”

Hiro didn’t nod. His eyes slipped down to stare at the table.

“But none of that is as fucking prevalentas some people would have you believe. Of course it’s hard to get reliable data from the general population though, because what kind of abuser-victim is just gonna come forward to say that they abused someone once and– no, no, please don’t put me away for life… Right?”

“Right,” Hiro echoed her, voice croaky.

“I guess it is kind of a problem,” she mused. “Some of those victims – male and female – end up in the exact same rehabilitation centres as their abusers. Guys just sitting around in group, talking about how they mercilessly ripped into their victims, who’re sitting just a couple of feet away from them…”

Hiro grimaced. It was so awful to even think about, and he wondered if it would be rude to ask her to stop talking now.

“So why’re you asking?”

A small twinge of panic – he didn’t have to try very hard to tame it. “Oh, you know,” he murmured, tapping his fingernails on his glass of lemonade, producing little tings, “I could talk about it, maybe. If it’s a male thing, I could…”

“I wouldn’t mention it.”

Hiro looked up at his friend. She was wearing a very lopsided, very careful and hesitant expression, and Hiro couldn’t tame the panic so easily this time. The pangs of it weren’t small.

“Just because of your characteristics and all,” she hastened to add, probably in response to watching him pale. “It just wouldn’t be such a good idea. Perfect victim, remember?”

Hiro stared at her until something in him… clicked.

“…Y-Yeah, right, of course,” he said, his voice suddenly loud, “No I’m just asking, well, because, someone sent me an email about it– that they think they might’ve, um, abused someone before, but they had a history of sexual abuse themselves, so…”

He was so lucky she was a bit too drunk to notice what was wrong with him. She chuckled a little and leaned forward and breathed, “Listen, Hiro… I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.” She raised a finger to her pursed lips and winked. “I’m all forthe recovery and rehabilitation of sexual offenders. Really. I absolutely am. But… just between you and me? Because I’m a survivor too – like you, like them – I just find that kind of thing… so…”

She took long enough trying to find the right word that Hiro already had an excruciatingly exact idea of what it was by the time she finally uttered it.

“Repulsive,” she hissed, and Hiro flinched. “I really can’t feel much sympathy for those kinds of offenders. It’s like… OK so, I don’t understand because it’s not me, and I’m not in their shoes and all that but– seriously…You hurt people, and you know it fucking hurts because you were hurt yourself. I just feel like…” She raised her hands, twisting and contorting them in an attempt to illustrate how she felt. “What, you…? You develop some kind of a kink for it? Is that it? You suffered and now you want to pass on that burden and inflict your own pain onto someone else? W-What… What kind of a sick fuck are you, and why should we even bother trying to help scum like you?”

Hiro fought to control his breathing. He stared at her with wide and fearful eyes, feeling like she was directly addressing him, with all of her scorn and derision and contempt…

She was still for a few seconds, as if she were waiting for Hiro to answer her. And then she started laughing, easing up on her grim intensity, leaning her head back against the wall. She had another drink, her shoulders bouncing with small shrugs. “I know it’s not very PC. Alice tells me off. She’s like,” Lucy imitated Alice’s soft-spoken voice, “‘but intimacy deficits, and nature of harm, and blah, blah, blah, blah’… But I can’t help it – it’s just the way I instinctively feel. And it takes a lot of effort not to let it affect my work. I’m a nice person on the outside. Er… sometimes.” She smiled at him sheepishly. “But on the inside I can be a real bitch.”

Hiro didn’t know what to do. There was nothing he could do. He’d met with her tonight, harbouring a little hope like a dying flame that he could tell her… But that flame was dead and gone now. Just a puff of smoke.

She was smiling at him, and there was nothing else to do except smile right back at her. Like smiling at death.

-------

When he next meet with her for some lunch, over a week later, she noticed the changes in him almost instantly.

“Your hair looks different,” Lucy remarked once they’d grabbed some food and found a table. She reached up to run a hand through his hair. “Less messy... Did you get it cut?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” She gave him a quiet nod of approval. “Looks good.” Her eyes dipped down and bulged. “A-And,” she laughed, “You’re wearing a dress shirt. No hoodie.” She peaked under the table. “No jeans. Wow.” She gazed back up at him, bemused but still smiling. “This isn’t like you. Why all this effort all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” Hiro murmured. “Just wanted to… look nicer, I guess.” Be a perfect victim.

“Did your boyfriend make you,” she smirked, and Hiro froze. She took up her chopsticks and spoke around a couple of dumplings. “There’s noway you’re doing this yourself. You must have someone smartening you up.”

“Um… I’m, actually in a new relationship now.” He stared at her, hard and convincing. “With a woman. Her name’s Emma.”

“Dang,” Lucy uttered. “You move fast, don’t you.”

“It’s been weeks,” Hiro protested, to which Lucy teasingly coughed ‘bi-slut’ under her breath. Hiro immediately asserted, as loud as he dared in a crowded food court, “I’m not bisexual.”

Her can of coke paused midway to her lips. “Oh, you aren’t?”

“N-No. I’m not. I don’t like guys. I thought I did, but… I was wrong. It was a mistake, dating Morgan. A mistake that no one ever needs to know about.”

Hiro hadn’t noticed that his hands had formed tight fists until Lucy was staring down at them. He made an effort to release them, allowing the colour to return to his knuckles.

“Did something happen?” she asked quietly.

“No– nothing happened. I’m just not bisexual, OK? I’m completely straight.”

“Riiight,” Lucy drawled, and she didn’t sound nearly as convinced as Hiro needed her to be. She kept eating her dumplings and noodles and fried rice, while Hiro could only prod at his unappetising salad. “Y’know,” she said after a few minutes of silence, “I don’t care what you are or what you aren’t. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

You say that, but…

“I’m not a slut,” Hiro insisted.

She was laughing now, “Geez, dude – I was just joking.”

“I’m like the opposite of a slut.”

“A prude?”

“No, I’m… I-I mean, yeah. I am prudish. I don’t even really like sex.”

“OK, Hiro?” She put out a hand to swallow up one of his own, and hers felt so warm. “You’re kind of freaking me out here. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he denied. “I’m fine. I’m good. I’m great. Everything is great. I’ve been real busy lately. I cleaned my house, I threw out a bunch of junk, I started eating right, sleeping right, I worked really hard on a lot of new inventions for work, and I… finally started putting some effort into how I look.”

“Wow,” Lucy exclaimed, surprised. “Hey and don’t forget all that fantastic work you’ve been doing for our organisation,” she reminded him. “You’ve been answering emails and making appearances and contributing to charity fundraisers and meeting survivors in person and doing all kinds of crazy shit for us. You’re like a one-man campaign.”

“Right,” Hiro said, smiling precariously, “So kill me now, while I’m still like this – before something changes and I ruin everything.”

Lucy struck a bewildered expression and laughed, like she thought it was some kind of stupid, melodramatic joke. Even Hiro laughed, hard and loud and forced, like it was all just a joke, like he wasn’t aware that some dark part of him definitely wasn’t joking. Wasn’t laughing along with the rest of him.

She smacked him on his upper arm with the back of her hand, still laughing, “Become a martyr.”

Hiro was still laughing too, “Suffer for the cause.”

She didn’t stop laughing, “Maybe you should’ve let those violent thugs who cornered you all that time ago mess you up – just enough to point to your bruises and broken bones and say ‘holy shit, look at what these assholes did to me, feel sorry for me!’”

Hiro’s laughter died out, little by little, until he was just staring deadpan over the top of Lucy’s head, lost in thought, seized by an idea. He could no longer tell whether it was a smart one or not.

“Hiro?”

His eyes centred back on her, and she was looking concerned now. “Seriously. You’re freaking me out. Eat your damn salad.”

“Sorry,” he said, forcing a bright smile to enter his face. He picked up his plastic fork and unclipped the plastic container. “I just zoned out for a bit, that’s all. I’m fine.”

She scoffed, looking down at her food and shaking her head. “You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

She sighed. “O-K, if you say so… Y’know I’m here if you ever wanna talk.” She glanced up at him thoughtfully. “You’re not doing anything today, right? Wanna come back to my place after this? Hang out, watch some old films or something?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I would, but… there’s something else I have to do.”