Chapter 2: Cruelty
The smell of burnt toast seeped into the dream, twisting it into something sharp and acrid before it vanished entirely. Mio Suzuki opened her eyes to the water stain on the ceiling, its shape like a rotten flower.The voice followed the smell, slicing through the thin wall.“You useless girl! Are you going to sleep all day?Get up and make yourself useful!”
Her foster mother. The words were the same, maybe a different order sometimes. Mio pushed the thin blanket back, her movements careful, a silent ritual.The floorboards were cold even through her socks. On her makeshift pallet, beside her worn schoolbag, lay a book.She hadn’t put it there. It was beautiful, which felt like an insult in this place. Leather the color of dried blood, with intricate, spiraling patterns tooled into the cover.It felt heavy, substantial. Everything else in Room 3B was light, cheap, threatening to disintegrate. The apartment itself was a damp exhale of stale coffee and old mold, the wallpaper peeling back from the corners like sunburned skin.She ran a finger over the cover, then shoved it into her bag.Later.
In the kitchen, her foster siblings, Koji and Aimi, were already eating perfectly golden toast. Their mother stood at the counter, her back a wall of resentment.“Your portion is in the sink,” she said, not turning around.
It was a single slice, blackened at the edges, cold and brittle. Mio picked it up.The char tasted like punishment.Koji giggled, a bit of jam on his chin. “Mio got the burnt one again.”
“She’s lucky to get anything,” their mother muttered, finally turning. Her eyes, flat and dismissive, scanned Mio from head to toe.“Stand up straight.You look sickly. People will think we don’t feed you.” She barked a laugh, a dry, empty sound.“Hurry up. You’ll make them late.”
The walk to school was a silent procession, two paces behind them.At the gates, their worlds split without a word. The moment she stepped onto the campus alone, the atmosphere shifted, thickened.Whispers clung to her uniform like cobwebs. She kept her eyes on the cracked paving stones.Class was a drone of ignored questions and averted eyes. The teacher’s voice faded into a buzz. She felt the stare from two rows back, a hot, insistent pressure on the nape of her neck.Suki Tanaka. When the lunch bell rang, the trap was sprung with casual efficiency.“Hey, Suzuki.The teacher wants to see you. Staff room.” It was one of Suki’s friends, a girl with a sharp smile.
A lie, obvious and flimsy.But not obeying was worse. The hallway to the staff room was long, echoing with the distant sounds of a normal lunch. They were waiting in a blind spot near the cleaning closet.
Suki stepped out, blocking the light from the window at the hall’s end.Her face was a mask of pretty, practiced cruelty. “You think you’re so special with that face,” she said, her voice low. “Just looking at you makes me sick.”
Mio said nothing.Words were fuel.
“She thinks she’s too good to talk to us,” another girl chimed in.
Suki’s hand shot out, not to hit, but to shove. Mio’s back hit the lockers with a metallic bang that traveled down her spine.“You were trying to talk to Mr.Ishida yesterday after class. Telling tales?”
Mio had only asked about a missed assignment.She shook her head.
“Liar.” The first punch was to the stomach, driving the air from her lungs in a silent gasp. She folded over, and then the blows rained down—not on her face, where it would show, but on her ribs, her arms, her back as she tried to curl into a ball. A sneaker connected with her shin.The pain was bright, specific, and total.
“Freak,” Suki hissed, breathing hard from the effort. “Sickly little freak.”
They left as quickly as they’d appeared, their laughter dissolving down the hallway. Mio lay there for a long time, tasting blood from a bitten cheek, listening to the throb of her own pulse in her ears. She pushed herself up, each movement a fresh knife, and limped towards the nurse’s office.
The nurse took one look at her disheveled uniform, her gritted teeth, and sighed. “Fight again, Suzuki?”
“I didn’t—”
“Save it.” The woman’s hands were efficient and cold, dabbing antiseptic on a scrape, handing her a cold pack for her ribs.No questions about who.No comfort.Just a transaction of minimal care.“You can rest here for ten minutes.Then you should go home.”
Home. The word was a black joke. Mio clutched the cold pack to her side and limped out when the ten minutes were up, every step a reminder. The journey back to Apartment 3B was a slow-motion agony of crowded trains and judgmental stares.She was invisible until she was in the way.
The apartment was empty, silent save for the constant, faint hum of the faulty refrigerator. She dropped her bag by her pallet and sank down, the cold from the floor seeping into her bruises. She wanted to sleep, to disappear into the water-stain flower on the ceiling.
Her hand touched the bag, felt the hard, unfamiliar edge.The book.She pulled it out.The leather was smooth under her bruised fingers. Had she put it in her bag this morning and forgotten?The day was a blur of pain.Maybe.She opened it.
The pages were thick, high-quality, and utterly, perfectly blank.Except for the first page. There, in the center, in what looked like neat, dark ink, was a single line:
You will return to this.A cold wire of recognition snapped tight in her chest.She had seen this. She had. The déjà vu wasn’t vague anymore; it was this page, this book, this moment.The words seemed to pulse. As she stared, a sharp, searing pain lanced through her lower abdomen, a ghost pain with no source, deep and hollow. She gasped, her hand flying to her stomach, pressing against unmarked skin. The memory was physical but had no image—a feeling of tremendous, tearing force, of sudden cold emptiness.
The panic came in a wave, drowning the lingering ache of Suki’s fists. Her breath hitched, coming in short, useless gasps.The room tilted.The peeling wallpaper seemed to breathe in and out. You will return to this.Return to what?To this panic? To the pain in her gut that wasn’t there?The sound of the key in the lock was a thunderclap. She scrambled, shoving the book under her pillow just as the door opened and her foster family returned, their voices loud, full of a life that excluded her.“Mio!There’s no food. Go to the market and get a pack of beer.” Her foster father’s command was followed by a few crumpled bills tossed on the table.
The thought of stepping outside, of walking towards that wide road, filled her with a terror so complete it was tasteless. It wasn’t a fear of Suki or her friends. It was a foundational dread, a cellular rejection of the world beyond that door.The phantom ache in her stomach throbbed in agreement.
“No,” she heard herself say.The word was quiet, brittle, but it stopped the room’s casual noise.
Her foster father turned slowly from where he was removing his shoes. “What did you say?”
Mio’s throat was dry.She gripped the edge of her pallet, her knuckles white. “I… I don’t feel well. I can’t go.”
He took a step into the room, his broad frame blocking the light from the kitchen.“You look fine. You’re always ‘sick’ when there’s work to be done.” His voice was low, a dangerous rumble.“Pick up the money.”
She shook her head, a minute tremble. It wasn’t defiance; it was paralysis.He crossed the distance in two long strides. His hand, thick-fingered and strong from his factory work, closed around her upper arm, yanking her to her feet.The pain in her ribs screamed. “You ungrateful little bitch,” he hissed, his breath smelling of cheap tobacco and sour rice. “We took you in, and this is how you repay us? By lying around and refusing to help?”
“Please, I—”
He didn’t let her finish. His other hand came up, not to slap, but to encircle her throat.His thumb pressed hard into the hollow beneath her jaw.The pressure was instantaneous, absolute. Her hands flew up to claw at his wrist, but his grip was iron.Her airway sealed shut.
A high, whistling sound filled her ears. The room began to swim, the water-stain flower on the ceiling blurring into a gray smear. Her foster mother’s face appeared in the doorway, a silent, disapproving spectator.The children peeked from behind her, their eyes wide.
Black spots blossomed at the edges of her vision.Her struggles weakened. As her consciousness frayed, her kicking leg knocked her schoolbag over. The beautiful leather journal slid out from under her pillow and tumbled onto the floor, falling open beside her.Her fading eyes saw the page. Not the first page with its warning.A later page. And on it, in her own handwriting she didn’t remember writing, were a few scrawled words: He chokes me in the living room.Then his grip shifted, a final, brutal crush of his thumb.
Something in her throat gave way with a terrible, internal crunch.The darkness that followed was warm and quiet. For a moment, there was nothing. Finally.
Then, the smell of burnt toast seeped into the dream.