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The room was quiet and still. Isolated and empty. Neat and surgically clean.
Okazaki stood in her bathroom. Staring idly in her mirror, steamed and fogged from the hours of endless cleaning— It was a simple habit, Okazaki told herself, surgical practices mean sterilization, and the constant uncleanliness just meant she wasn’t washing enough. That’s what she told herself.
The room was still steaming and boiling hot from the shower, skin slowly fading back to its normal soft tan, despite its burning red look, boiling water seeped into her skin, scorched and burned to the core.
She stared in the mirror and watched herself move. Running a hand along her chest, where her mastectomy scars met in the middle, just barely a small dip down. Beneath all this flesh ran blood, fresh and hot, her blood. Kan’s blood.
They felt strange.
They admired their looks often. They didn’t see themselves in the mirror, this time around, shoulders prickling slightly with discomfort. They saw… something. Okazaki prided themselves on being androgynous, flat chested and lithe and nimble. “Made it easy for thieving,” they’d joke, mindless and excusable, a push to limits for anyone else. But for some reason, their vision warped. Their hair seemed so long, so ragged and matted, skin bruised and short in stature, childlike and lonely. All of their prideful scars seemed to fade, replaced with bruises along her forearms, bandages that didn’t belong. Before long, she was staring at her normal self in the mirror again.
Yume was stuck in their blood. Abandoned and adapted into Okazaki today. Yume was dead. Yume was killed by Kan. Yume was saved, by Kan. This body is Okazaki’s now. Not Kan’s. Not Yume’s. Okazaki’s. He gave them this blood, this survival, this life, buried it into them and taught them everything, and they were desperate to keep it as their own. They wanted to own it. They wanted it to be theirs. Their body ached with missing parts, with empty scars, with lava hot memories, with iv drips. They had no life without the blood in their veins.
They owed him everything. They owed him, everything. They owed him life, blood, body.
Fuck.
Okazaki knew this already. Knew that they were reborn in his image, deconstructed, pulled apart, put together and built up by his hands. It was common sense. It wasn’t new.
They pressed their hand to their stomach, to the long scar, jagged and rough that they created themselves. Then moved to the scars against their sides, the places where Kan injected and removed and touched, touched, touched, touched— He was everywhere. He had felt her everywhere. He was first, beyond all else, her first father, her first lover, her first savior. She could see the marks, despite the years gone by. Despite the washing. Despite the boiling hot water meant to keep out the cold.
They could see all of him.
Little Yume, on cold tables, in pitiful hospital gowns and marks marring her imperfect skin, imperfect blood, imperfect insides. A fascination. He was just so fascinated by her, that’s what he would say. Her parts. Her pretty face. His perfect little daughter. He just loved her. He wanted her. He needed her. It was an uncontrollable urge. He loved her. He said he loved her. He promised it wouldn’t hurt unless he wanted it to. He told her it would feel good later, that this was all for her sake.
He meant it.
Okazaki felt her skin heat back up as her eyes spilled with tears, painfully uncontrollable, pitifully childish. She resented the way she threw up in the sink in horror, in disgust, like the taste of him still coated her mouth despite all her efforts to cover it up, to taste something, someone, anything else.
They reached for their throat, coughing as they reached across the counter, toppling over perfectly organized and sterilized stacks of stolen bath supplies with a grimace— Reaching for her toothbrush, dry and coarse. She shoved it down her throat, pained by the lack of a gag, ‘self’ taught, eyes watering only from the fear as she scratched her throat raw, coughing up spit and blood into the sink.
Dispelling what he gave her. Forcing it out of her, in any way possible. She needed it, desperately, out of her forever, needed it to be her own— And she cried more when she realized it was fucking useless. All of the blood that splattered the sink was little compared to what he gave her. He was stuck in her. He had buried himself so deep she could never remove him, surgically glued to her insides, sticking to her bones, slathering her organs in sticky, revolting residue. Seeping into her skin.
They felt like throwing up. They couldn’t even force it.
His little girl. His daughter. His wooden doll. They weren’t a girl. They were nobody’s daughter. They weren’t anything like that at all. Nobody had wanted her except for him, in every way.
They felt so cold. They felt so cold, naked and alone and desperate for their own body, something they never had. It was so horrible, to want him still and to still be so scared. They were so evil. They had to be, or else everything was for nothing. They just wanted something they hadn’t touched. A home. A body. Virginity. Decency. Herself.
They threw the curtain to the shower open again, hands shaking with what they wanted to say was forced excitement, in an effort to enjoy the way their stomach twisted, the way their throat burned and hot blood coated their lips and teeth. In seconds, boiling hot water spilling into the space, dousing them in scalded relief. They sat on the shower floor. They let themselves drown for a bit, suffocated in the heat, hoping it would burn him away.
They hoped it would be better, to wash off the feeling, just like when they were younger. They hoped this time it would work.
They hoped he wasn’t watching.