Say Something

Hiro was sitting on the bean bag, gazing out the window, wiping dark red lipstick off his mouth. He had to get it all off. His brother would be home any minute now.

He faintly recalled the reason why his brother had stopped their game to go out. To get more supplies, he’d said, or something along those lines. Supplies? What supplies? What for? He turned his head towards the calendar and saw that it was a Saturday. Not that it made a difference to Hiro – every day was just as slow and tedious and foreboding as the next, like an endless Sunday afternoon. The coming Monday on the calendar was marked with big red text that he couldn’t quite make out from his distance… Did it say ‘resume’? Resume what?

Hiro was in the warm sun but he suddenly felt cold. Resume SFIT. The new semester would begin. In a day or so, Tadashi would be back at the Institute, spending anywhere between two and twelve hours on campus, five or six days a week. Hiro would be at home all alone again. With no one around. Except for…

“No,” he murmured. He started shaking his head slowly, then faster. “No,” he repeated with more urgency. “No. No. No.”

He wasn’t just going to lie there and take it anymore. He wasn’t going to be her puppet anymore. He was going to put his trust into his older brother. He was finally going to tell him the truth.

He leaped to his feet with fresh resolve and started pacing. If nothing about his awful situation was going to change, then Hiro was going to throw himself out a window. He had to brave. He had to be convincing. He had to constantly remind himself, as he paced nervously around his bedroom, waiting for Tadashi to come back, that any consequences that came from his confession would’ve resulted in a better situation than he was in now. What was the worst that could happen? Aunt Cass was manipulative, but she wasn’t violent. And Tadashi was kind-hearted, deep down underneath all that ignorance. If he could just tell Tadashi what was going on, then he’d find out once and for all if his brother was on his side or not.

He had options, he kept telling himself. He was a person withfeelings and rights. He didn’t have to live like this anymore. There were options.

Even if his brother did react adversely, Hiro couldn’t be stopped from just walking out the door.

-------

“I’m home, Hiro,” Tadashi announced routinely as he walked in, tossing his keys to the desk. He looked up and was pleasantly surprised to see that his little brother wasn’t sitting on his bed grouchily as usual, all turned away and aggressively ignoring him. No, today Hiro was standing in the middle of the room, doe-eyed with anticipation. “Hey, buddy,” Tadashi smiled and ruffled his hair. “Listen, we can pick up where we left off with that game in a minute – I just have to put some things away.”

As Tadashi whistled and put away some books and pens, Hiro closed the door and jammed an old chair underneath it. He checked that the handle wouldn’t budge and hoped that it would stay. The last thing he needed was Aunt Cass trying to check in on them; he wasn’t going to let her throw him off again.

Hiro stood in front of the chair so his brother wouldn’t know anything was up. Tadashi brushed off his hands and smirked at him. “So was I the blue controller or the red one?”

Hiro forced himself to act casual. “D… Doesn’t matter.” He tossed him one from his desk. “I could still beat your sorry ass even if I started with the disadvantage of your bad playing.”

“You talk big for a little kid,” Tadashi laughed, taking a seat on the floor. “I will annihilate you.”

“Don’t count on it, nerd.”

They resumed the Tekken-styled fighting game they’d been playing an hour before Tadashi had gone out. Hiro usually won those games fairly quickly. His older brother often tried to tell him that it was just his sheer dumb luck every time, because there was no strategy to winning a round. Hiro reckoned that only sore losers ever said that. But, as much as he loved just pounding Tadashi into the ground and setting new records for the quickest K.O., he slowed it down today. He was trying to draw his brother’s interest out.

“Oh my God,” Tadashi uttered, astounded, eyes never leaving the colourful screen. “I’m actually beating you… I’m actually…”

Hiro started mashing a useless button. He’d let his brother have this round. “Ooh, you got me, bro.”

“Ha!” Tadashi shouted triumphantly and jabbed a pointed finger at his brother. “In your face!”

Hiro shoved his hand out of his face. “You haven’t secured your victory yet, moron…”

They played another few rounds. They swapped characters and backgrounds. And Hiro was getting more and more tense by the second as he prepared himself to just spit it out. He was losing every fight now; he couldn’t make his fingers move fast enough for all their trembling. His whole mouth felt dry. His heart beat like he was seconds from death. The bright colours on screen were making him feel dizzy…

He was too panicked. He could feel himself start to back down.

Maybe I could tell him later when-

No. He had to say something now. He should’ve said something a long time ago, but that didn’t matter anymore – he had to tell his brother the truth now, before things could get any worse than they already had through his silence. He had to say something.

He glanced over at Tadashi. He was just sitting there, fingers moving so effortlessly over the controller, smiling up at the flashing screen. He looked so innocent. Like he had absolutely no idea of the carnal atrocities that had been going on in his own home.

Come on, Hiro goaded himself. It’s not so hard. Don’t be embarrassed. Be brave. Tadashi loves you. Nothing bad is going to happen. Just be brave. Just wait for the right moment and then…

“Dashi?”

“Yeah, loser?”

Hiro paused. No, keep going. He doesn’t mean it. Don’t let it knock you. Just keep going. “Sh-Sh-he abuses me.”

His brother turned a sharp, inquisitive glance towards him, then went back to the screen. He looked like he thought he had misheard his little brother. But he probably hadn’t. “Sorry, what did you say?”

Hiro gulped. He couldn’t go back now. This was the point of no return. “Aunt Cass… She abuses me.”

Tadashi had gone silent. Hiro couldn’t even feel his arms anymore; they were just hollow tubes that flowed from his body and onto this machine that had suddenly gone quiet of all punching and groaning noises. Tadashi had stopped playing. Hiro had stopped playing.

Hiro could hear the hard confusion in his brother’s voice. “What… Wait, what do you mean she ‘abuses’ you? What does that mean?”

It was embarrassing. Hiro didn’t want to say it, but he had to. Red filled his cheeks and tears filled his eyes. He’d just been lying to himself before. He didn’t think that he’d ever done something so hard in his entire life. “She touches me,” he admitted in a small voice. It could barely be heard over the background game music. “She… does… sexual things with me…”

“With you?”

“On me, I don’t know…”

Hiro lowered his head. His body was racked with tears and nervous shaking now. He was clutching his controller so hard he thought he might break it, sending plastic splinters right through his hands. He was so scared. He couldn’t even look at his brother right now; he had no idea what kind of face he was making at him.

“…Are you serious?”

“I’m not lying,” Hiro said, and the tears were hot and choked in his voice. It was so hard to breathe. He sounded just like a little boy again. “When-ever you’re out, she… that’s when she…” He wiped his face on his shirt sleeve. He swallowed hard. Everything hurt. “That’s when she comes here and does those things with me. Th-That’s why I… want you to stay with me all the time.” He couldn’t handle this. He let his controller clatter to the floor so he could put his face in his hands. He wasn’t even sure if his words could be heard coherently through the tears anymore. “I don’t want to be alone with her. I’m not lying, please believe me, Dashi...”

Hiro understood that his brother needed time to process everything. But every second of uncertain silence that ticked past made Hiro feel like the nerves in his taut arms were bursting, like his hot head was going to explode with emotion, like he was going to be physically sick from overwhelming anxiety. His composure was ruined; he was crying openly now, into his hands. If his brother didn’t start talking soon then he’d be wailing. Even though he’d done nothing wrong, he felt like a colossal fuck-up who had colossally fucked up. He felt horrible.

When he felt his brother shift, he was convinced that it was to get up and walk out the door. But then, quite unexpectedly, he felt his brother grab him and wrap him up in one of the strongest hugs he’d ever been in. It was like being barred by two iron support beams. Only those beams were also shaking, like he was.

“I…” Tadashi was finding it difficult to speak too. He sounded like he was losing his voice. “I don’t think you’re lying, Hiro, I just… I find it really hard to believe that… Aunt Cass? But… she’s so sweet, and… ” He sounded like he needed a minute, and Hiro let him have it. He had his hug for now. As his stress started to fade, Tadashi’s seemed to escalate in response. He asked questions that he sounded like he really didn’t want to know the answers to. “How long has…? She…?”

It was hard to shrug when Hiro’s shoulders were being crushed and bound by the hug. It even started to hurt a little, but he didn’t care. “A month,” he said. “Maybe more… I don’t know… It’s… hard… to say when she started…”

Each answer hit Tadashi like actual physical impact. He felt… devastated. Distraught. And as much as Hiro realised that this was a good reaction, it still broke him. It still made him wish – if only a little bit – that he’d kept his mouth shut and kept playing the game and never made his big brother so upset.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Tadashi cried. He drew Hiro back, braced his shoulders, and shook him. “Why didn’t you tell me so I could…”

Hiro peered up at him guardedly. No, please, he wanted to say. He wanted Tadashi to finish that sentence. So he could… what? Not ignore his desperate pleas to move out?

“Why didn’t you tell me,” Tadashi repeated more calmly, easing up his firm grip. He looked so inconsolably anxious. “Hiro? Why didn’t… You and Aunt Cass… You didn’t… did you?” Hiro squinted and waited for his brother to make more sense. There was clearly something he wanted to ask without actually having to say the words. “Did you and her… have…?”

Hiro was starting to get annoyed with him. “Yes, we had sex,” he snapped. “She raped me.”

And then Tadashi made an expression that frightened Hiro. He had thought his older brother was beginning to understand the severity of what had happened to him, but that small, fleeting, uncertain grimace had spoken volumes. Hiro shoved at him to be released, to get as far away from him as possible. He was going to start crying again.

“Hiro, wha-!” Tadashi tried to restrain him. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t believe me, do you,” Hiro accused, tearful and angry. “I know what that look means!”

“What look?!”

“That,” he poorly tried to imitate it, “look! You don’t think that… it’s real. Just because I’m a boy.”

It had been just another haunting barrier to confiding in his brother. Late at night Hiro had sat up at his computer, browsing forums that occasionally touched upon the subject of sexual abuse. Almost every time he found that he related a hell of a lot more to girls’ experiences than he did to boys’, who liked to show off their bravado for sleeping with a women twice their age, or else they would be told that they were so lucky if they complained.

Tadashi made a face like he had no idea what he was on about. But it looked forced. “What? No… Hiro, look, maybe we should talk this out with Aunt Cass, and then we could –“

Talk this out with Aunt Cass?

Hiro couldn’t control himself. Resentment surged through his bloodstreams, and before he could decide against it he’d punched his older brother right in the face. He’d punched Tadashi so hard that he cried out and fell backwards.

Hiro shakily stood over him. “I shouldn’t have trusted you,” he said, voice trembling. He watched, breathing heavily, as Tadashi rolled over onto all fours and put a hand up to his face. “You know, I actually… Sometimes, I thought you knew about it. And you just didn’t…” It hurt to say it. It sent his heart plummeting through the floor. “You just didn’t care.”

Tadashi looked over his shoulder at him. He was covering one of his eyes gingerly. “Hiro, that’s… That’s ridiculous. Of course I didn’t know about it. What kind of big brother would I be if I knew about that and just… did nothing…”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

Hiro walked over him and Tadashi actually flinched. It gave Hiro such a rush; it made him feel powerful and in control. It was a nice feeling he hadn’t been able to experience lately. But he still felt so full of hate and regret and betrayal – the kind that just made him want to stomp on Tadashi’s stupid apologetic face until his feet got sore. But he was going to put all of that negative energy to good use.

He was going to get the hell out of there.

He noticed that the fighting game was still playing. He didn’t bother to turn it off properly; he just walked over and switched off the console. Then he walked over to his side of the room and dug around underneath his bed. He resurfaced with an empty canvas satchel, which he slung over his shoulder as he worked his way around the room, stuffing in clothes and gadgets and toiletries and hard-drives, and anything else he was going to miss when he was gone.

“What… What are you doing? Stop.” Tadashi pulled himself up to his feet and stared, horrified. He raised his voice. “Hiro? What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Hiro barked, not stopping. He worked faster. He almost had everything he thought he needed now. “I’m going to get my own place.”

“You can’t get your own place – you’re only fourteen.”

“Yeah, well… I’m sure there’s someone shady out there who’ll let me stay in a place if I pay them enough. I’ll sleep out of a trash can in the street if I have to – anywhere’s better than here.”

That was everything he wanted. He zipped up his bag and started towards the door, when he realised that he’d jammed a chair underneath the handle earlier. He cried out angrily and dropped his bag to the floor to get the damn thing out of the way. Aunt Cass had barely walked up the stairs; the chair had proved itself to be more of a hindrance than a precaution. Tadashi was already walking over.

“Come on,” Hiro yelled, frustrated, but it was too late. Tadashi was right behind him. His arms wound around his little brother’s shoulders tightly. Hiro couldn’t move.

“Hiro, please.”

“Let… Let me go, Tadashi.” Hiro had meant to sound livid, but his brother’s tenderness was giving him pause. He was mad, but Hiro didn’t want to leave Tadashi behind. He wanted him to understand. He sighed sullenly. “I’m not staying here anymore. I can’t do it. You’re going to go back to SFIT soon, and… I’ll be stuck here with her again… I can’t… If you ever really cared about me, Dashi, then you’d just let me go.”

Tadashi started to cry. It alarmed Hiro. He could’ve counted the number of times he’d witnessed his older brother crying on one hand, and that included their parents’ funeral. He turned to face Tadashi and it was true. He made for one hopelessly ugly crier. But it was so sincere. It was so wretched. And, it looked incredibly painful for that one eye Hiro had left bruised and swollen, and now leaking with tears.

Hiro jumped a little when Tadashi laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m…Mm-I’m a…” God, he was blubbering so bad that he could barely get a few words out. Get it together, Hiro wanted to say. It was actually a bit funny to see his usually-so-staunch big brother cry like a little baby. But Tadashi eventually got the words out. “I’m a terrible big brother,” he cried.

Hiro widened his eyes. “What? Noooo…” Hiro had said it pretty sarcastically, but Tadashi still shook his head adamantly like he was trying to disagree with him. It actually made Hiro chuckle a little.

“No, I am,” he cried out. “I am. I… Because I knew that…”

Hiro’s mouth fell open. “Wait, you did know?”

“I only knew that something was wrong between you and Aunt Cass, but…” He let his head fall forward. He raised a hand and patted at his swollen eye gently. He sucked in a deep breath only to waste it on some more crying. “I thought… I was so stupid, I just… thought that everything would work out, and you would stop acting like a brat soon, and… And now you’re trying to leave our home and I’m just…” He shook his head some more. “I’m so sorry, Hiro. Please don’t leave.”

“Woah, hey…” Hiro’s anger had almost completely subsided now, seeing his brother look this regretful. He patted him on the shoulder. “Look, I… don’t want to leave without you. But… you’re not giving me much of a choice here, bro…”

“God,” Tadashi breathed, squeezing his eyes shut. “What would mum and dad say?”

Hiro hadn’t known them very long in his small life to guess what they might say in any given situation. But he thought he could take a stab in the dark. “Probably that you… should do the right thing and… look out for your little brother?”

Tadashi opened his eyes – one of them anyway – and stared at Hiro. He was making such a sad, sorrowful expression that it gave Hiro chills. “I just… Our family’s been through enough, you know,” he choked out quietly. “I just wanted a family… And I know that’s no excuse, but… and Aunt Cass…” He shrugged helplessly. “She’s still family.”

Family. That’s right.

Sometimes Hiro forgot that Tadashi was not three but seven years old when their parents tragically passed away. Hiro was still so young then that – even if he was a genius – he wasn’t anywhere near Tadashi’s level of understanding just what had happened to their suddenly absent parents. Their deaths had obviously impacted his brother a hell of a lot more. It made sense that Tadashi loved Aunt Cass so much and held such high opinions of her. She had been amazing – adopting the both of them despite her complicated circumstances, trying to give them a normal life after everything they’d been through.

…But sometimes amazing people did horrible things. And Tadashi needed to understand that now, for both their sakes.

“Every day, I feel like I owe her my life,” Tadashi whispered. “She was so good to us – she was so strong for us when mum and died, and… I just… still can’t believe that she would… ever hurt you, or me, or anyone else.”

“Well…” Hiro didn’t know how he was going to explain this, but he was going to try. “It’s not really… hurtful, what she does – like in the conventional way. It’s different. It’s like… She tells me that I’m really mature for my age, and it makes me feel really good about myself. But… then… she’ll tell me that I’m better than other guys. And that… I can do the same things that adults do. Like…” He looked away for a second. “Sex things... A-And she gives me loads of cakes and tells me she loves me because she wants me to love her too. I think sometimes she actually does believe that I do… Because she’s so lonely…” He frowned then. “It doesn’t excuse her actions, though.”

Tadashi nodded lightly in agreement. He was no longer bawling; just snivelling occasionally now. “I’m sorry, Hiro,” he murmured, wiping at his tears. “I couldn’t… protect you.”

Hiro tried to smile. “You can now, though. Remember my perfect plan? Where we get a place together? You sign the lease, I pay the rent? You go on studying to change the world one day, and I become the world’s youngest championship bot-fighter?”

Tadashi was silent for a long moment. His gaze slipped to the floor. Hiro realised that this was hard for him, sure, but… with all due respect, he hadn’t been the one being abused and manipulated all this time.

“Tadashi…? I’m serious.” Hiro picked up his satchel once again to cement his point. “I’m sorry that we can’t all stay together like you want. But I can’t even be in the same room as her anymore… You get that, right? She just… has such a hold over me. I’m not myself around her.” He was her puppet. She beckoned him and he kneeled, like a dog. “So, either you can come with me, or I can go it alone... I’ll still visit you. At the Institute or something.”

Hiro’s hand hovered over the door handle and Tadashi slowly raised his red eyes back to him. His stare was begging him don’t do this. But he whispered, “You’re not going alone.”

Hiro perked up. He felt elated – relieved. “You’re leaving with me?”

Tadashi nodded carefully. “I’ll leave with you.”

“Well… Great!” He patted his big brother on the cheek twice. Tadashi reacted like it was another couple of blows. “So… uh, someone has to tell her. Or should we just leave a note? We could leave as soon as you’re done packing? Oh – if we hurry then I can catch some bot-fights tonight, and then we’ll have enough money to get one of those really fancy hotel rooms, with the chocolates on the pillows and the spa-baths! I’ll check for fights now.”

Hiro whipped out his phone to access the website detailing all the local bot-fights for the night. Tadashi raised a limp hand to stop him. “Hiro…”

“Hiro? Tadashi?”

Hiro felt his blood run cold. No. This isn’t happening. Not now. No. No, no, no, no, no –

Aunt Cass knocked on the door. She was right outside. “Are you boys hungry?”

Hiro could feel his stress levels rising again. His breathing had become shallow and sharp. His nails dug into the strap on his satchel like someone was threatening to snatch it right out of his hands. Hiro felt like a cornered animal, like he’d never get out of this house now – no matter how close he was to escaping her.

Tadashi must’ve seen how terrified Hiro was just to hear her voice because something changed in his expression then. It was only a slight shift in his eyebrows and mouth, but it represented a mental decision that was so much more. He touched Hiro’s head supportively and whispered, slow and clear so that there were no misunderstandings, “I’m going to have a talk with her.” Hiro made a frantic expression and opened his mouth to protest him, but Tadashi quickly cut him off, “Why don’t you start packing some of my things for me?”

Hiro stared at him silently. There was such a meaningful look in his eye. He thought he might know what Tadashi was trying to say. Even though I’m going to talk to her, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not going to abandon you. I’m not going to let you leave without me.

As Tadashi slipped out of the bedroom and descended the stairs, Hiro could hear Aunt Cass gasp and cry out, “Oh my God, Tadashi – what happened to your eye?”

Hiro didn’t want to get his hopes up too high. He wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

But he was starting to feel very hopeful.