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“Do you understand?”
Questions have no point or purpose when they come from your father. You will always say ‘yes,’ and there’s no other answer to be had.
“Yes.” Muscle memory. Subservience is the earliest training you’ve ever practiced.
“It was inevitable.” He places a hand on your shoulder, perhaps in an attempt to reassure you. Perhaps in an attempt to reassure himself— but you can feel it in his slight tremble: it won’t work for either of you. You wonder to yourself if that’s what’s really inevitable about it all.
This time you cannot bring yourself to say ‘yes.’ When that happens, you choose instead to say nothing at all.
Silence hangs in the air for a few moments before your father speaks up once again. “...Do you know why it was so?”
Does a question like that serve a purpose? Will it help you or him to know the answer, if there is an answer at all?
“It was God’s will.” He answers as confidently as he is able to. “You’re alive because God willed it to be. Because you were chosen. Because all your training has come to fruition.”
“...” How much are you able to believe such a thing, when all your actions thus far contradict that you, of all people, would be chosen of all the people in the organization to survive? You can’t get the smell of blood out of your head, the feeling of a body growing cold in your arms, or the sound of faint breathing growing even fainter into nothingness. Someone like you is unable to kill. You will be useless to the organization, and you should’ve died instead of— “...Yes.”
If there is a reason that you are alive instead, you want to believe in it.
“Very good.”
-
“What is this?”
“...I’m sorry.” You answer quickly, breaths still heavy and wheezing. A nasty pile of mush— your vomit— lies in a puddle in front of you.
“Your performance recently is concerningly below average. You are unable to handle tasks you should not be struggling with at this point.” Your father is much like a doll, rather than a human. He does not move to scold you or to assure you, simply standing distantly away. His hands stay put, and his eyes do not twitch. “Especially after you have already failed a mission. Do you take this seriously?”
“Of course I do. My life belongs to the organization.”
“...” His expression does not change. He does not believe you; you suppose that’s only fair. “Do you know what has been sacrificed in your stead?”
“I know.” You reply as quickly as possible. No one needs to remind you. You know. You’ve known it every day since then.
“Sei died.”
That name. Your stomach churns, that urge to gag and dry heave the nothingness left in your stomach rearing its ugly head again. “I know.”
“And you are alive.” A small pause. “When you are faced with failure, you must think to yourself: ‘why was I chosen? Why am I standing here as the organization’s top assassin?’ Perhaps then, you will gain the motivation needed to excel in your training.”
“I know.” You know. Of course you know. Deep inside, you want to tell him, do you think I don’t think about that every day? Do you think I want to throw away my own brother’s life because I’m a coward who is unable to kill, when I’ve trained for it since childhood? Thinking how I could have possibly survived instead of someone more capable like him or any other one of the kids who were there too?
You look at your father again. A change in his expression subtle enough that you could notice, but that nobody else would. He hates to mention it too. He hates to say that name too. To utter it, he really is serious about the urgency of your improved performance. After all, what will happen to you if you continue to fail? The answer is well-known to the both of you, but does not dare get spoken: surely, you will die.
“...With that in mind, I would like to see you improve accordingly, starting from now.”
“...Right now?” It’s a stupid, childish question, that came involuntarily out of your mouth. Sometimes it feels you haven’t grown at all, a whine you’d say back when you were still a child who got to eat cake made by his father when he’d done well. But ‘doing well’ is only the bare minimum.
“You are not done for the day, are you? Yes, right now. Do you understand?”
There is no point or purpose. You will agree, and become something that you are not. It’s only inevitable. “Yes.”
This had to happen, you repeat the thought to yourself, there’s a reason you’re here. You lift yourself up, choking the bits of bile back down your throat, staining the soles of your shoes with your own vomit, threatening to slip down onto the ground again, but never faltering, your blade ready in your shaking hands.