Chapter Text
The First Hour…
For once, the smell of a smoker's car had him on edge. The heavy rain hitting the car window only made the smell stronger.
Thick air. Tight knuckles. Muted swallows.
He must have pissed off his father again.
Tianyu peeked up front. His father was speeding again. The highway was hardly visible even with the wipers on full blast. They squeaked and croaked with their back and forth. The noise wasn't comforting like it used to be.
This car used to save him. He'd get in after losing a scrap with neighborhood kids, or after failing another test in school.
What had he done this time that made his father so much more silent than usual?
He wouldn't dare speak. Tianyu rubbed his arm idly. Last time he tried to ask what was happening, the hand gripped to his arm and throwing him into the car had threatened to injure him.
He'd just keep quiet until they got where they were going.
The Second Hour…
Tianyu began to wonder if this was the result of his mother abandoning them.
It wasn't fair to her to call it that, but she left after one argument. She didn't come ask Tianyu if he wanted to come. She just left. Tianyu had watched her grab all of her stuff one night, frantically packing while his father slept downstairs, and she put it all into a random car and never came back.
His father had never been so… there was a word for it, but angry wasn't it. Tianyu certainly didn't know any big words.
He thought maybe she hated his father. He wasn't the best man, but she had to have liked him at some point, so what happened? And why did that hate make Tianyu a problem?
Unless it had nothing to do with his mother, and everything to do with Prize Winner's recent passing.
It'd only been a week and a half since it happened. Had he really become such a failure to his father that the death of a winner's chicken started a new type of hatred?
Tianyu didn't really want to think about it, but lying on his bookbag half full of clothes, he was unable to do anything else. He was too restless and curious as to where they were going. He couldn't sleep. He didn't want to sleep.
The Fourth Hour…
He ended up falling asleep somehow. Maybe it was the rain, or the silence, or his father yelling at him for moving around so much. It didn't matter. Tianyu slept for maybe an hour, and the highway had changed into city streets. The buildings, pressed so tightly together, thinned out and grew more distant the longer they drove. Then, after a turn, city buildings became neighborhood houses.
More time and another turn, and the car stopped. Tianyu was told to stay in the car, or he'd get his ass kicked.
His father's words, not his.
Sitting in the car, Tianyu watched other cars drive past through the window. His father was taking a while, so he peeked through the other window. It looked like his uncle's butcher shop, but he wasn't sure. After all, there was no uncle of his to be seen. Just his father standing at a door, reading a sign.
Tianyu got right back in his seat when the driver's door opened. Frustrated, his father got back in the car, and they drove somewhere else.
Neighborhood houses to countryside, and Tianyu really recognized the area. They were visiting his uncle!
Suddenly excited, Tianyu fidgeted in his seat. He stopped fast, after he caught his father's eye in the mirror.
He could just be excited still-ly and quietly. His uncle would save him from his father's anger, anyway.
ﾟ+. 🥚 .+ﾟ
Once at his uncle's other home—the one closest to his barn, Tianyu was allowed to get out of the car. He walked behind his father to the back where the pasture was. Even in the rain, Tianyu's uncle was working hard doing his farm chores. He had on a raincoat and rainboots. Very ugly outfit, if Tianyu had to have an opinion, with mud and grass all over it.
His father called out to his uncle, getting his attention.
Uncle Raymond was never happy to see the two of them, really. Not even when Tianyu's mother was still around.
He apologized about Prize Winner.
It put a sour taste in Tianyu's mouth, but he ignored it.
"So, what's up? Why do ya have the kid here at this hour? Don't he got school or somethin'?"
"He's been excused."
"Ya couldn't have done that at a reasonable time." Uncle Raymond didn't sound very excited about their visit.
His father avoided that, and asked to talk inside. His uncle shrugged and said the door was open. He also said to let the dog run around and Tianyu can play with it.
Inside, playing with the dog, Tianyu had no idea what his father and uncle ended up talking about. All he knew is that after dinner, his uncle and father sat down to watch TV while he played. He played and played until he fell asleep with the dog right on the floor. It was a safe, inviting place, where he wasn't yelled at for just being a kid. A full stomach and a friend his age made sleep come to him much easier than it did at home or in the car.
Come morning, Tianyu was on the couch with a blanket. The dog had been put away, likely when his uncle went to bed.
Breakfast was already starting. Tianyu knew better than to be late. He hurried and washed up in the closest bathroom, then ran into the kitchen.
His uncle was cooking, but his father wasn't there. He knew better than to be late, too. Tianyu took on the job of finding him before breakfast was truly finished.
Not in the living room,
Nor the bathroom,
Nor upstairs,
No way out in the barn or pastures.
Tianyu went to the front door, ready to check and see if the truck was still there, but stopped when he saw his bookbag. Suddenly heavy, he went back to the kitchen.
"Uncle Ray…" he began, hearing the sadness in his voice as though someone else were speaking. "Where's my dad?"
ﾟ+. 🐣 .+ﾟ