Chapter 17
It wasn’t working. Pretending that nothing had happened just wasn’t working.
Despite his brother’s warning, Hiro still stayed in touch with Takahiro over the course of the next few weeks. The boy contacted him – it was never the other way around – on what was eerily becoming almost a daily basis. Hiro responded to him somehow, between work and the sexual violence campaign and his new rigorously structured life, and it only ever encouraged Takahiro to send more and more emails back, even during what Hiro definitely knew were school hours.
The emails were precious. They were heart-breaking. They revealed a lot more about the current state of Takahiro’s life that he seemed willing to openly admit to. Or maybe he just didn’t realise how different he was now.
Sometimes, when Takahiro seemed to imply that he was having an especially bad day, Hiro would cave in and meet his demands and see him in town. He acted happy to see him, keeping up a good enough façade. He would buy him ice cream and churros, like he used to, and maybe buy him some new clothes or browse for a new duffel bag, since his old one was nearing tatters, and Hiro would maybe take him to see a film or to an arcade for a few rounds of whatever he was in the mood for. He would do anything Takahiro wanted to do, go anywhere with him he wanted to go.
Hiro had to do it. He felt obligated, deeply indebted. Trapped… He often got the impression that Takahiro was lonely. The boy would casually mention, “I don’t have many friends,”and Hiro’s heart would just sink because he thought he understood what that meant. It was code socially awkward pariahs like himself used, because outright admitting that he had absolutely no friends, or no one he could really talk to, just sounded so blunt and awful. Sad and pathetic. Hiro hadn’t ever really thought about it before, but… Takahiro had seemed like a pretty lonely kid back then too.
Just like you were…
It was tearing Hiro apart, slow and steady. He could see how his own behaviour was impacting Takahiro. His victim, maybe. He could see a younger version of himself in Takahiro and it hurt. Despite Hiro’s constant shut-downs, Takahiro never forgot about it – the possibility of his own abuse. He’d only stopped talking about it. The boy was… withdrawn, depressed, anxious, dependant, confused, isolated; he was almost everything Hiro had once been. At this stage it didn’t even matter anymore whether Takahiro had really been abused or not, or by whom; he was genuinely feeling the effects of it. And that was a problem.
God, he thought. Even the ages matched up. Takahiro was almost eighteen. Hiro had been eighteen when Cass had sat him down and yelled at him until he’d cried that the abuse wasn’t real and that he was just… Overreacting. Imagining things. Remembering it wrong.
And now you’re doing the same thing to him…
The worst part about seeing Takahiro was seeing the effects up close. He still bore heavy, dark circles under his eyes like he didn’t sleep right anymore. He still left his coat at home on rainy days, allowing his uniform to cling to his bony, undernourished frame. He still sometimes phased in and out of the conversation at random, not always there, not always responsive. He still showed off Ds and Fs like they didn’t really bother him at all.
That was the most troubling thing. The fact that Takahiro was failing school. He was so close to finishing high school – he only had another couple of months left – and his grades had suddenly steeped from average to appalling to not attempted. It unnervingly reminded Hiro of when he himself had just missed all the major requirements of his courses in the last year of his engineering degree. How things had just fallen apart on him all of a sudden, and he hadn’t even really noticed, much less cared. Takahiro had this look about him now that gave Hiro the impression that he was beyond caring too.
The kid was mostly smiles and a reserved kind of fun whenever Hiro was around. Takahiro let slip details about his miserable life here and there, but he never failed to laugh when Hiro sometimes jokingly called him Baka-hiro. But Hiro suspected that as soon as the boy went back home, back to his empty house – his dad overseas once again – things were very different. Things might’ve been absolutely awful. But no matter how much Takahiro pleaded with him to come to his house, Hiro still refused. He couldn’t cross that line. Even when Takahiro promised in quiet tones that no one would ever have to know about it, not even his dad, not even Tadashi, it just… chilled Hiro to the bone. Right to his very core.
Hiro had to end it.
Something had to change.
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Hiro didn’t just give a speech on the importance of children and other youths disclosing their sexual abuse that Saturday. He also found time to talk about the importance of adults – not just parents but all adults – listening to disclosures of abuse, and to take them very seriously. To treat them as a low cost yet high gain scenario; that it was better to be safe than sorry. It was better to investigate a few immature children’s lies than it was to risk dismissing genuine cases of sexual abuse. It was important to believe children, and to treat every confession or cause for concern as something to notice. Something to report.
It was so easy, when he was up in front of a rapt crowd. He was very confident at public speaking by now, regardless of the topic or his audience. He wasn’t thinking about any of that; his mind was always more focused on what information he needed to give, on keeping succinct and coherent and audible, on how to be sensitive, on how to make an impact. But once he was down from the stage, back in his chair between Lucy and Alice, listening to the next speaker thank Hiro and summarise all of his key points and again reiterate just how important it all was… It just…
The full force of just how much of a fucking hypocrite he was slapped him in the face. And slapped him some more.
It didn’t stop slapping him.
He looked down at his lap where his hands fidgeted. He couldn’t meet the speaker’s thankful gaze. He couldn’t give a smile and a nod to show that he appreciated the acknowledgement. He barely even listened to how the next speaker added to his topic. Instead, he shakily reached for his phone.
There was another email from Takahiro, sitting pretty at the top of his inbox. It was rude, he knew; his own talk was done but the event wouldn’t end for at least another half-hour yet. But he couldn’t resist opening it.
Hey…
I got invited to this random party this weekend. I don’t really get invited to anything. But I thought I should like… try one out? Dad’s not back until Tuesday so it’s not like he could stop me…
It’s at this girl’s place – I think her name’s Charlotte? People tell me she likes me. I don’t know if they’re just teasing or not though. Apparently she flirts with me a lot but I don’t really hear it. I thought we just talk normally but… I’ve never had a girlfriend before so I wouldn’t know. Dad always said I should focus more on my studies than girls, and I do, but… I don’t know… I kind of want to go. I think there’s gonna be drinks there. I’m still 17 but most of my class is 18 so they probably don’t know… I’ve never been drunk before. I think it could be fun… What do you think?
Um get back to me whenever… I know you’re real busy. It’s OK. Don’t worry about me.
Hope you’re well…
- Taka
“Hiro?” Lucy gingerly put a hand on his arm and he jerked away from it. She could’ve been anyone. “Hiro, are you OK?”
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” Alice agreed in a whisper.
Hiro couldn’t breathe. “I-I…” I need to get out of here. “I-I have to go,” he mumbled, rising up out of his chair.
Lucy stood with him, “Do you need me to–“
“No…” He tripped, pitching forward for a half-second – several hands rose up to steady him and he held up his own defensively, warding them off. “No, I… just need to…”
But he’d already broken away from the seated crowd. No one could hear him. He walked – away from the rows of eager supporters, from the stage, from the banners, from his friends, from everything. He could hear the current speaker’s passionate speech reverberate across the green field, all around him. It was surreal. It was dysphoric.
His dazed walk became a light run. His light run broke into a sprint. He didn’t know where he was running to. He ran until his legs gave out, and he didn’t stop until he was sure the taut pressure building up and up and up in his chest wasn’t going to result in screaming.
He spotted a small public bathroom and made a sharp swerve towards it. His feet came to a grinding halt inside the men’s, and he leaned his head far over the grimy sinks, gasping for breath, the wheezing pain hot in his throat. His screwed his eyes shut, squeezing the tears out, and he hoped like hell that no one else was in there, that no one else was going to walk in and see him fall apart right in the middle of the day and ask him to explain why. He must’ve looked scary. He sounded scary. It couldn’t have been a very nice thing to stumble upon.
He glared up at his trembling, rasping reflection. He considered ramming into it and indenting the most beautiful spiderweb-cracked pattern with his forehead, but a voice that was unmistakably his brother’s scolded him for even thinking about it. You ought to take better care of that big brain of yours, knucklehead, he’d say, probably. Joking and yet not joking. I’d kill you if you ever hurt yourself.
Tadashi…
Tadashi would understand. Right? Tadashi would believe him when he said he’d never meant to hurt anyone. Right? Tadashi would give him the benefit of the doubt. Right? Tadashi would have mercy on him, like he’d once had mercy on Aunt Cass. Right? Tadashi would help him fix this mess...
Right?
He was still clutching his phone in one hand. He held it up. He’d cracked the screen at some point and he ran his thumb over the cuts idly. It still worked. It was just a little broken on the surface, that’s all. It still called his brother when he asked it to, and he could still hear his brother’s voice just fine when he picked up several long, heart-stopping rings later.
“Hello?”
That was it. That was all it took. He only had to hear his big brother’s friendly voice once for the barrage to break apart. His first words to Tadashi weren’t even words at all; just hideous, gasping, sobbing wet noises that vaguely resembled the syllables of his brother’s name: Ta-da-shi. And then just ‘Da-shi. A name Hiro hadn’t called his brother since he was still a little boy. A name that Tadashi immediately recognised from their childhood as a sign that something was wrong.
“Hiro–“ Tadashi’s voice flooded instantaneously with distress; he was choking with it. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
It took a few moments for Hiro to speak. He ran the back of his free hand over his face, over and over, but it was like trying to wipe away rainwater. Utterly futile. He could just hear his anxious brother want to reach right through the phone and give him a big, comforting hug.
And it was making him worse.
“Y-you love me,” Hiro rasped out, “d-don’t you?”
“Oh, Hiro…” His brother’s voice was so full of woe. “Of course– of course I love you. I love you with every fibre of my being.”
Please be true.
“W-Would you still…” Hiro bit down on his quivering lip. He had to go on. He had to. It stung and it burned and it ached and he wanted it to end, and the only way it would was if he went on. He inhaled with a shudder. “Would you still l-love me… even if I… d-did something h-horrible?”
Tadashi paused. “Hiro, what do you mean,” he asked, cautious and fretful. Concerned. Conditional. “What happened?”
“I…”
He swallowed hard, his throat sore. He gazed up at his wreck of a reflection and a voice in his head said with a resoluteness that surprised even him, You are breaking this cycle. You are not going to be Takahiro’s Aunt Cass anymore. He is not going to suffer in the same ways that you did. You are going to be brave and face your fear and take some responsibility and set things right because this has gone on long enough.
“Hiro?” It was just a quiet plea. “Hiro, I’m here. Please talk to me – tell me what happened.”
This was it. The point of no return.
“’Dashi, I… I-I think I… did something horrible…”