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When Rin goes to live with Hatori, he’s still wearing an eyepatch.
He’s retired the bandages in favor of a black wrap that goes across his eye, as though he’s trying to blend it in with his hair, but she still sees it. Sometimes his hand will fly up to it suddenly as though it hurts, or as though he’s remembering something. One night at dinner he suddenly drops his spoon and walks out the front door, slamming it behind him. Rin looks at Momiji questioningly, and Momiji just frowns down at his rice.
“Ha’ri is having bad dreams.” He confides in her, and that’s that.
That’s something she understands. Bad dreams. She has them too, although when she can’t sleep she wanders through the house, looks through Hatori’s books, skims the titles and first pages but doesn’t commit to reading them. He doesn’t have any photographs in the house, which is strange. Even Shigure has photographs.
Hatori’s dreams are different, though. She can hear him from his room, begging. Sometimes she hears Kana’s name, sometimes Akito’s. He always sounds like he’s in pain, but she doesn’t dare do anything about it. Nightmares are private things.
One night she opens her eyes in the darkness suddenly, unsure of what woke her. She slips out of bed, not bothering to turn on the light. She likes the quiet darkness of night, how nobody can see her when she hides her body in shadow. She silently opens her bedroom door. It’s mostly dark in the hall as well, although there is light from the bathroom, where the door is cracked open and casting a yellow beam across the floor.
Not thinking, she assumes it’s Momiji and goes to ask him what he’s doing up so late. Usually if they’re up at the same time they’ll go back to bed together. Sleeping in the same bed is much easier sometimes. She pushes open the bathroom door.
Instead of Momiji, it’s Hatori.
His hair and face are wet, and the water is dripping down into the collar of his shirt. His eyepatch is off, discarded on the bathroom counter. His hands are gripping the counter tight enough for his knuckles to turn white. His head is bowed.
Rin realizes immediately that this is not something that she should be seeing. She starts to back up, but Hatori’s head suddenly jerks up and then he’s looking right at her. His eyes are red, his face pale. There’s some sort of paste smeared over his bad eye. It’s had some time to heal, but it’s knotted with scar tissue and the eye itself is so bloodshot it’s almost entirely a deep pink. The iris is milky, and Rin realizes Hatori will never see fully out of that eye again. It’s the first time she’s seen it since Shigure told her what happened.
“Sorry!” She gasps, stumbling backwards out of the bathroom. She can’t help the terror that chases her heels, telling her that Hatori will be angry that she walked into something so private. She runs back to her room, closes her door and fumbles for the lock. Instead of getting back into bed, she scrambles underneath it, laying there and staring into the darkness of her room.
She strains to listen for movement in the house. She hears the sound of Hatori’s footsteps leaving the bathroom, and then standing outside her bedroom.
She squeezes her eyes shut, barely breathing. After a moment, the footsteps fade away into Hatori’s bedroom. She hears his door shut.
She still doesn’t move until her legs start cramping. Then she finally crawls out from underneath her bed. When she gets into bed, she pulls the covers up over her head as though they can protect her.
Hatori is already awake by the time Rin gets up the next morning. She can hear him moving around in his office. She puts on her uniform, collects her school bag, slips on her shoes as quietly as possible. They usually don’t talk much in the morning, so it’s not unusual for Rin to leave without saying good-bye, but the guilt of it still nags at her. Rin waits outside for Momiji, and then they go and collect Haru, and she listens to the two of them chatter as they walk to school.
Before they split off at the usual street corner Haru asks her if she’s okay, and she just nods.
“Have you seen Tori-nii’s eye?” Rin asks Momiji later that evening, on the walk home. Haru has gone to the dojo, leaving her and Momiji to wander home, just the two of them. They take the long way, walking slowly through the forest to put off the inevitable homework.
Momiji nods. “A few times. I saw it when it first happened.”
“Was it bad?”
Momiji’s mouth twists, and he nods quickly this time.
“I saw it.” Rin says. “Last night.”
Momiji looks up at her suddenly. “How?” He asks. Hatori is incredibly careful about taking off his eyepatch in front of the two of them.
“It was an accident.” Rin says.
“Was Ha’ri upset?”
Rin thinks back. At the time, she’d been so focused on his eye and her own fear that she’d barely looked at his face. Was he upset? Or was he angry?
“I don’t know.” She says.
When they get home, Hatori is standing outside the house and smoking. He’s still wearing his white coat. Rin is always struck by how long the coat is, cut to fit Hatori’s impressive height. It’s flowing out behind him in the late-autumn breeze, making him look even more intimidating.
“Go ahead, Momiji.” Hatori says, lifting his cigarette to his lips and carefully watching Rin. “I need to speak with Isuzu.”
Momiji glances back at Rin, hesitating with his hand on the door. For all Momiji insists that Hatori is kind and gentle, he still silently offers to stay with her, recognizing her fear.
She nods at him. He goes inside.
Hatori doesn’t say anything yet. Rin isn’t sure if he’s thinking or if he’s waiting for her to say something, so she stays silent. She stares down at her shoes, notices a small scuff on the left toe. The heels are low— Hatori ignores most of her clothing, but he insists that she wear something at least slightly appropriate for school.
“Are you afraid of me?” Hatori asks suddenly.
Rin’s head jerks up from her shoes, her eyes meeting Hatori’s single exposed one. She wants to say no, to insist that she’s not frightened, but the words dry in her mouth. Hatori’s looking at her critically, examining her the way he does during checkups. He sighs. Tilts his head away from her to look out at the Sohma grounds beyond the small yard.
“Shigure told me that he spoke with you before you moved in. He said he told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Rin nods in silent confirmation. She remembers that day well. Shigure was still living in the Main House, and he’d come by Kagura’s home. Rin remembers hearing Kagura’s mother’s voice rising in anger at Shigure, and then a few quiet words from Shigure that left her silent. Then there’d been a knock at the door, and Kagura’s mother informed her that Shigure wanted to see her. Kagura’s mother had her face tilted away from Rin, but she still thought she saw the slightest sheen of tears on her face.
“Come for a walk with me.” Shigure had said, holding out a hand for her. He’d asked her on a walk in the same way so many times as a child that she couldn’t help herself— she reached out and took his hand, he helped her down onto the grass, and they went on a walk. Shigure had told her that she would be moving in with Hatori, that the family had deemed it so. He offered no explanation beyond that, except for the fact that she wasn’t being rejected— that Kagura’s mom fought to keep her, and there was only so much power she had in the family.
There was little comfort in that. Rin had gotten used to the idea of being completely unwanted. All it did was prevent her heart from breaking a little further, but she’d nodded anyway.
And then Shigure had turned to her and told her very seriously that Hatori would never hurt her.
Of course she remembers it.
She can feel Hatori staring at her.
“Did you not believe him?” Hatori asks. He’s looking at her like he’s figuring something out. Shigure does the same thing— reading people, finding things out without them telling. Rin tried her best to build up a defense to it, but Shigure can still read her mind with a single glance. “Do you not trust him?” Hatori asks this time, as though he already knows the answer.
Rin stiffens. “I…” She starts. She swallows. There’s no good answer to it— Hatori and Shigure are close. But she also doesn’t think she can lie to Hatori right now, when he already knows exactly what she’s thinking.
He sighs. “You don’t have to defend him.” Hatori says. “You probably know him better than most.”
Rin nods again, her eyes drifting back down to her shoes. She’s long since realized that Shigure lets very few people know him in any way, and Hatori acknowledging that she’s one of the few gives her a strange feeling.
“I won’t hurt you, Isuzu.”
“I know.” Rin says, finally. She does. Even without Shigure saying it, she’s never seen Hatori raise his hand to any of her cousins. He’s never been anything but gentle with her during her appointments. After her mother— after the hospital— Hatori would come by and check on her. Every time she’s hospitalized, Hatori is there to make sure she was okay.
She has no reason to believe Hatori would hurt her. She knows this. But she can’t help flinching when he raises his hand too close to her, and she can’t help running when she’s frightened. And she can’t help but, against all logic, be afraid of him.
“It’s okay for you to be afraid sometimes.” Hatori says. Rin looks back up at him. He’s not looking at her anymore. His eyes have drifted towards the sunset, and she can see the golden-orange of it on his face, reflected in his remaining eye. “When people you love hurt you, it’s frightening.”
Rin feels nauseous. She doesn’t want his tacit acceptance of her fear. She wants it to be wrong, to know that it’s not supposed to be there, that it’ll go away if she just pushes at it hard enough. “When does it stop?”
“I don’t know.” Hatori says.
Rin tries to ignore the hollow feeling in her chest that his words leave. She turns her head to look at the sunset that Hatori is gazing at, but the sun is so bright that it burns her eyes. She squeezes her eyes shut, but she can still see the orange glow through her lids and feel the warmth on her face. She drops her bag and lifts her hands to cover her eyes.
If Hatori notices her crying, he doesn’t say anything to indicate it.
The overwhelming feeling passes quickly, and she wipes at her cheeks to clear away the tears. The ache eases as long as she doesn’t let herself think about it.
“I’m sorry, Tori-nii.” Rin says, offering an apologetic bow.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“I interrupted you last night.”
Hatori’s mouth twists into a sad smile. “I need to get used to locking the door, is all.” He says. “It’s not something you should worry about.”
Rin doesn’t know what to say to that. She wants to express— something. That she recognizes his pain is too similar to her own. That when Shigure told her about Hatori’s eye, and told her that Akito had done it, Rin had ached for him. That she remembers trusting someone so completely that she barely felt the first few blows before she crumbled underneath them. That the memory of that feeling— that fear— is burned into her. She’d heard the maids gossiping about how Shigure carried Hatori out of Akito’s rooms.
You’re frightened too.
Hatori has finished his cigarette. He turns to go inside, and before she can think about it she’s crossed the space between them and grabbed onto the sleeve of his white coat. He stops in surprise and looks down at her.
She doesn’t have the words for it, so she just looks up at him, needing him to understand. Silently pleading with him as her fingers tighten on the starched fabric. He just looks down at her, one eye dark, the other one ruined and hidden away. He pulls his arm out of her grip and for a moment Rin feels the soft crush of rejection, until he places his hand on her head and gently ruffles her hair.
“Don’t worry about it, Isuzu.” He murmurs. He drops his hand from her head and walks inside, leaving the door open in silent invitation.
Rin can hear Momiji in the kitchen, asking Hatori when they’ll be having dinner, and then Hatori’s low voice responding with something she can’t make out.
She walks back out into the yard to retrieve her bag. The leather has bits of grass stuck to it from where she dropped it, but she doesn’t bother brushing it off. She hears Momiji calling her name, the sound of Hatori turning on the rice cooker and getting ready to make dinner.
It’s starting to get too cold outside. She turns away from the late-autumn sunset and walks into the house, carefully closing the door behind her. It’s warmer in here, and she listens to Momiji chattering away in German as she toes off her shoes. Hatori is calmly listening to his story, nodding every time Momiji pauses for a reaction.
She doesn’t understand how he can just return to life like this. That he can be so damaged and hide it. That he can’t look at his own reflection, but can somehow stand in his kitchen and make rice and polite conversation. It’s barely been a month. His eye isn’t even healed. He still hides it under an eyepatch. He’ll be blind in that eye for the rest of his life, a permanent mark on him of what was done. He’ll see it every time he looks into a mirror. Rin’s father never marked her face in any permanent way, and she’s suddenly sickeningly grateful. Almost three years later, she feels that fear like it’s a part of her, still curled in the pit of her stomach, waiting for any invitation to boil over. How can Hatori just be okay?
Hatori catches her staring at him, and tilts his head towards the table in silent invitation.
Rin’s breath catches in her throat. The thought of being near him right now is unbearable. She tears her eyes away and drops her bag next to her shoes. Without a word, she escapes into her room. She locks the door behind her.
Momiji is saying her name again. She doesn’t respond.
She pulls her pillow off her bed and lays on the floor, curled up against it. Through the door she can hear the domesticity of Momiji and Hatori setting the table, talking, joking. She thinks of Hatori curled over the sink. She thinks of how tightly he gripped the counter, bent over as though in pain.
She buries her face in her pillow, and chokes back the urge to scream.