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My life has been nothing but one trauma after the other. The reason for why I have said trauma? The man who’s supposed to be my own father.
It all started when I was five. At first, I thought it kind of made sense that he didn’t want me to watch a TV show intended for girls, but he didn’t need to be so aggressive about it.
Then, when I was seven, everything changed. After I got into a fight at school, he tore the head off my plush tanuki Miyamoto as punishment. I couldn’t handle the idea he would do something so cruel. I didn’t think anyone would do something like that, so I denied it happened. I denied Miyamoto existed. I denied my father could be a bad person. I even denied how my mother never stood up to him, even when he almost killed me by poisoning me with soap in my mouth.
Things started to come crashing down only a few months ago when it was revealed he had corrupted the high school, APE institute, he was the principal of. He falsely expelled students and fired teachers to cover his tracks, twisting the arms of six other teachers to follow his lead. I denied the truth of that revelation at first, but could no longer contain my grief and had to accept the truth.
This was only just the beginning of me doing that.
A couple of weeks ago, the trial against him and the corrupt staff of APE ended, with a guilty verdict being declared. The six other teachers – one even being a paedo – showed remorse for their actions, while he never did. He admitted to what he did, but knowing he still had his time in the spotlight, he was no worse than that British TV presenter who was revealed to be a paedo after his death.
It was then that I started having nightmares. When I was awake and I thought back to what was in them, I would start crying. I didn’t know why, but after a trip to a psychiatrist, I learned that I knew all along. It was years of denial slowly reaching the surface, and during that meeting with the psychiatrist, all my trauma and sadness because of my father emerged. I felt vulnerable. I didn’t feel like I was the person I was anymore. I felt like I was younger than I really was, all because of the misery my father had caused me.
But it was more than just sadness. There was anger, too, and I lashed out at my mother for not saving me when he abused me. Later on, I realised how I had hurt her, and my guilt overwhelmed me. I apologised to her and she forgave me, but I still don’t feel the same after that meeting. I may have had a weight lifted off of me by confessing to what my father subjected me to, but then I felt empty. I still feel empty.
After I told my friends the truth, I decided to make a video and post it online. I told the viewers of my gaming channel the truth about my home life, let alone how it affected me both in the past and in the present. The response I received was mixed; some people came to my side and completely sympathised with me because they’d been through the same thing, while others accused me of being an attention seeker. In fact, some of the viewers who were against me were former APE students who had been expelled, or worse, because of my father. Some of the viewers were even international, as the news about APEgate was heard all over the planet due to how bad it was.
After reading yet another slew of unsympathetic comments on the video one night, I decided to go to bed. I turned my bedroom light off and lied in my bed, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. My life was hell because of him, and I really didn’t like it. It was then that I said to myself “I wish he was dead” before going to sleep.
The next day, while I went to school, my mother was paying a visit to my father in prison. She was going to be handing him the divorce papers and then severing any ties we had with him. She was going back to her old last name, which I was also going to use to further distance myself from him.
It was during my second-to-last lesson of the day at Franxx Academy when I heard Principal Frank speak over the speaker system, wishing to see me in his office. I was surprised, but I immediately knew what it was going to be about. He had been friends with my father for many years, and was furious when the APE scandal hit, so I knew he was going to talk to me privately knowing how my mother told him the truth about what our home life was like. I knew he, let alone his wife, were already mad after my mother gave him that phone call, but it was just a case of waiting to see what he had to say.
As soon as I entered his office, I was surprised to see my mother was also there, seated on one of the chairs. She looked pale; she normally was, but appeared paler, almost as if she was shocked by something. Principal Frank told me to sit beside her, as she had something important to tell me.
“He’s dead.”
“He’s dead,” I thought. “What’s she on about?”
She explained to me that my father, along with the former vice principal of APE, Reo Tsuda, and the paedophile Dai Rokuda, had all been killed. They were murdered by a guard in the prison, who wished to avenge their son who had committed suicide due to bullying that APE failed to stop. The guard was going to kill the other four teachers and then take their own life, but was stopped.
At first, I didn’t know what to think about this. After processing it for a few seconds, I laughed. I actually laughed, almost as if I had been watching something funny on the TV.
“He’s gone!” I laughed. “He’s actually gone! The bastard that ruined my life is dead! Yes! That’s what he gets for being such a prick!”
I jumped up out of my seat and punched the air with joy.
“Zorome!” my mother sharply spoke. “No!” She was clearly not happy with me.
“What?” I faced her. “You don’t see this as a good thing? Even after not just what he and those teachers did to APE, but what he did to us?”
“That guard had no right to take their lives,” Principal Frank firmly told me. “He may work with the law, but what he did was for personal gain.”
“But they were guilty!”
“Guilty or not, he shouldn’t have done it. What he did does not reverse the harm they caused.”
“He was supposed to be imprisoned, not executed,” my mother added. “I’m going to press charges against the person responsible.”
“Mum, there isn’t a point. We don’t care about him anymore, that’s why you divorced him and why I’m taking your last name.”
“Zorome, please.” Principal Frank was almost irate. “You’re not grasping the situation properly.”
“Principal Frank, I couldn’t care less about my dad, let alone those teachers, after what they did.”
“Zorome, they may have committed terrible acts, but they were still human beings who—”
I never heard the rest of what he had to say, as I had walked out of his office and made my way back to class. He never bothered following after me, ditto for my mother. All the while, I happily returned to the lesson I had left.
I soon told my friends, Squad 13, about the news, and they were all shocked to hear about it. Like with the APE scandal and my confession to the abuse I was victim to, they offered me support, but unlike those times, I told them I was alright. No matter how many times they kept asking me, in person or via text, if I was alright, I kept telling them I was.
Later that evening, the incident in prison was on the news, although the name of the guard responsible for the death of my father was yet to be named. Just like when APEgate hit, the news was global, with many people from overseas commenting on it as well.
That night, I had a nightmare. I was surprised to have it, as I hadn’t had one since my trip to the psychiatrist. Unlike those ones, this nightmare wasn’t cryptic; I found myself being victim to the verbal abuse my father would subject me to just for watching Strelizia and the Protectors, the aforementioned TV show intended for girls. It wasn’t quite a flashback, but it was certainly like the incidents where he would swear at me over it.
The next day at school, when I arrived at homeroom, my homeroom teacher Mr. Kato spoke to me in private. Like my friends, let alone my own mother and Principal Frank, he was offering me support knowing the news about my father not just the day before, but from when I confessed to the abuse; no doubt he had heard of this from Principal Frank. Mr. Kato is a stoic guy, even being composed when he was mad, so it was odd to see him actually express sympathy. I reassured him I was fine and that the news didn’t affect me, and like with my mother and Principal Frank, he insisted that my father’s death was still a serious matter. I glossed this over once more and let my day go ahead.
During the school day, I remembered my nightmare, and how my father not just didn’t like me watching Strelizia, but forbid me from buying the merch for it. Knowing that he was out of my life and had no control over me, I decided to spite him and buy an action figure of my favourite character from the series, Argentea, after the school day had ended. I removed it from the packaging and everything. I had no reason to play with it, but I wanted to prove he would no longer control what I did and that I was happy without him in my life.
It was that evening when something bizarre happened. Even though I had been having so much joy with my father being dead, I had really strong thoughts of anger. I was even imagining myself killing him. Even after I forced myself to accept the truth how he was a bad father, I never imagined myself doing that. I wasn’t even as angry as I was back then, and yet, I was having these thoughts.
If that wasn’t already odd, I found myself having another nightmare that night. This one was even more haunting, as it was a time where my father almost killed me by accident. When he learned I swore at a teacher when I was ten, he forced soap into my mouth, and I was so ill, I had to go to hospital. He forced both me and my mother to keep quiet about what happened, concocting the lie that I ate soap as a dare from a friend. I didn’t get it – why was I having these nightmares? Why were they haunting me over things he did when he was now out of my life?
The next day was a Saturday, so I knew I could unwind and do whatever I wanted. As neither myself or my mother had any plans, I suggested to my friends via text that I threw a party to celebrate the death of my dad and the other teachers that guard had killed. None of them liked my idea, even going so far as to being disgusted by it. I questioned them why, and they said it was of poor taste. Even one of them, Zero Two, who had falsely been expelled by APE to cover up how she tried to help a student report a teacher for hurting them, didn’t like my idea. I was blown away! She hated him the most, and there she was shooting down my idea.
In the afternoon, I found myself having more angry thoughts, but these were different. Instead of picturing myself attacking my father, I was attacking my mother. My fury at her for not doing anything to stop his abuse was making me imagine this, and as soon as I realised that I was having these thoughts, something came to my mind. Something that I had buried away for a week.
But here’s the thing: I don’t know if it really happened, or was just a dream I had.
The same day I had my mental breakdown following my trip to the psychiatrist, I was so angry, I tried to kill my own mother. During the night, I was trying to smother her with a pillow because of how upset and angry I was with her. She fought back, hitting me over the head and knocking me unconscious. And this is where things get blurry; I remember this happening, but I didn’t have a sore head the following morning when I woke up. Was it just a dream caused by my emotional breakdown, or did I genuinely try to kill her? I’m too afraid to even ask her, especially after the fight that definitely happened beforehand. I feel horrible for that, as she still has the scar.
Even when I went to sleep that night, things weren’t simple. Yes, you guessed correctly – another nightmare. And what happened this time? I was remembering when he tore Miyamoto’s head off. At first, the whole thing happened as it did originally, but when the head came off, it wasn’t cotton coming out of Miyamoto. It was blood. Actual blood. I could even see bones as well.
When I woke up, I checked that Miyamoto, who my mother had fixed for me, was still on my desk. He was still there, completely intact, but I couldn’t look at him. For some reason, I just couldn’t look at him without feeling upset. Like I had done for many years before, after my dad tore his head off, I hid Miyamoto in my cupboard. I just couldn’t face him anymore.
I then realised something about why I was feeling the way I was; it was a trigger. An emotional trigger.
“So, this is what being triggered means,” I remember telling myself. “No… I can’t be. I can’t be having what Kokoro has.”
My friend Kokoro had PTSD from when she found out she had not just been pregnant, but gave birth on the toilet while at school. The whole thing really messed her up, and knowing how I was going through the same thing, I felt even sorrier for her. But I also knew I had someone who I could not just relate to, but ask for help.
The next morning, I texted her about what I should do, to which she told me it was best I went back to the psychiatrist we were both seeing. She revealed she had actually started seeing him again as her PTSD was making her feel worse than before. I don’t quite get what she meant, but I hope she wasn’t thinking anything along the lines of killing herself. Kokoro is a very sensitive person, so I dread to know what she’s thinking because of what she’s been through. I then talked to my mother about seeing the psychiatrist again, to which she told me that he did say I had PTSD and was possibly bipolar as well. Even if these were the case, she booked another appointment, and a few days later, I saw him again after school.
Kaneko, the psychiatrist, confirmed I had PTSD, and explained why I had been behaving the way I was since my father’s death:
I was in denial.
Just like how I’d denied the truth about APE when the news broke, let alone how my father had treated me since I was five, I was now in denial about the fact he was dead. My joy was nothing but a cover for my grief. As Kaneko explained, I wasn’t upset about how my father was dead – it was because his death didn’t undo the damage he caused. Even if he wasn’t murdered and died from a heart attack, he died of old age, or even remained alive in prison as he carried out his sentence, whatever happened to him wouldn’t have changed a thing.
I may have found an answer for why I hadn’t been happy, but I didn’t leave Kaneko’s office feeling lighter. If anything, I almost felt worse, just like when I left his office the previous time I saw him. It all dawned on me that, no matter what happens next in my life, my father still won at making me miserable. His actions were forever going to haunt not just myself, but my mother, too, and we were going to have to live with it.
Not long after that, the guard who killed my father and the two other teachers wished to see their families. We visited him at the Cerasus Police Station, where he was now ironically being held until his sentencing. His name was Kohsuke Goda, and during his time in custody, he reflected on what he did and realised what he did was wrong. He let his grief over the death of his son get the better of him, and he apologised to us for what he did. I could only forgive him; I could never blame him for anything. If anything, I could understand why he behaved the way he did, just like with what I’d done towards my mother the day of my breakdown.
And this is where I’m at now. I’m still not happy, even if I have accepted everything that’s happened. Everything my dad did still haunts me.
No. He’s not my father. Not anymore. A father cares. He didn’t. Itsuki Asaka is never going to be called father, dad, papa, or anything parent-related anymore. He was a monster who not just ruined the lives of others, but my own one. I’m willing to argue what he did to me was worse. Looking back now, I wish that whole incident with the soap had killed me so I wouldn’t have to live knowing I would wake up every day remembering what he’s done.
Principal Frank has always been so nice to me. Why couldn’t he be my father instead? Perhaps… perhaps I could see if he’ll fill in that role for me…