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He’s not a good person.
Or rather, he’s not a good person enough to make his daughter stop what she’s doing.
If he truly was a good man, a sane man, he’d have stopped everything years ago, around the time Ryo gave herself her first rough, uneven haircut and came to him shyly to ask him to help her even it out.
Back then, he had been shocked and he had scolded her – she was too young to play around with scissors, a girl her age couldn’t and shouldn’t cut her hair herself, what had she been thinking, if you wanted to go to the hairdresser you just had to tell me or Grandma, you’re grounded young lady! – because of course he had.
Ryo was his daughter; it was his role to protect her and make sure she was safe, and to show he loved her. How could he not love her? She was his child!
But she wasn’t…
Ryo was not the person he needed to feel whole, as sad as it was.
It was nothing against her, he repeated to himself as he locked the door to his darkroom and started to work on his latest pictures.
He could hear his daughter move in the kitchen corner, fixing dinner for them both. Pork curry with rice and pickled vegetables as side dishes, she had told him brightly before putting on her apron and getting to work. She had picked berries in the forest during a trek the day before his return if they wanted a dessert.
(He hadn’t commented on the fact she had gone alone. Maybe he should have. Ryo knew the forest around here back and forth but still...)
A good meal.
He liked curry. His daughter liked it too.
She followed her mother’s recipe.
A roll of film fell and rolled on the floor.
He picked it back with shaking fingers.
The more the years passed, the more Ryo kept growing to resemble Ruri despite her attempts at modifying her appearance to distinct herself from her mother’s ghost.
Her short hair (though she hadn’t cut them in a while...), where Ruri had always worn hers long and almost always braided or plaited, easily pinning them with a hairpin or another hair accessory if she wanted them out of her way. Wearing only pants and shorts, where Ruri had enjoyed wearing skirts and dresses – and to buy them in drove for their daughter, often in shades or with patterns resembling hers so they ‘matched’. Her speech, rougher and more androgynous, where Ruri had been very feminine in her expressions despite being as much an ‘outdoor person’ as him and their only child.
Making herself look and act like a boy, as if her being a girl was the problem.
(And it was, kinda, but not in the way Ryo thought.)
The worst part, though?
It was that sometimes, he slipped and called his daughter ‘son’ instead.
And he was doing it more and more frequently, to the point Ryo didn’t even flinch anymore when he did.
That wasn’t right.
It made him want to weep – or laugh hysterically.
He should stop her already. Tell her what she was doing was unnecessary.
Ryo looked like Ruri.
Girl or boy, his child looking like their mother was always going to hurt.
(Though perhaps, yes, if Ryo had truly been a boy and the resemblance a little less striking, he might have been able to let go of his grief more easily. Or perhaps not. At this point, he had no idea anymore.)
His wife’s parents had tried to talk to him about it several times already, but while he had listened, he had done little to change his and his daughter’s way of life and they hadn’t insisted (the fact they had health problems keeping them away played a part here, though. If his Father-in-Law hadn’t been battling sickness himself, he’d have given his son-in-law an earful).
Even Hisami had tried to breach the subject, even if he suspected it was less for Ryo’s sake and more because she was getting unnerved by his never-ending mourning and his increasingly longer and longer assignments AND because Ryo’s ‘tomboy attitude’ might reflect badly on her as a close relative.
Hisami had always cared more about herself and appearances than anyone else.
That why he had preferred Ruri in the end – the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing apart.
He closed his eyes.
One day, he’d have to speak with Ryo about… about everything.
He couldn’t let her keep growing like that, pretending to be something she wasn’t just for his sake.
He was her Father.
It was his role to provide guidance.
It wasn’t her role as a literal child to shoulder HIS pain and try to lessen it in whatever ways she felt worked – even if he was appreciating the gesture, of course he did.
Ryo took more about Ruri than just in physical appearance. She had her heart, too. That genuine kindness aimed at people, that ability to see past one’s deeds and offer them a second chance, that fierceness when defending something… that was all Ruri’s and, perhaps, just a little bit him as well.
Ruri…
His wife would have been screaming in his face right now if she was still around and if she saw the mess he had caused. What he was turning their child into.
He should have put his foot down from the very beginning, he thought again, working mechanically, familiar gestures after familiar gestures barely registering anymore.
He should have.
He had known that after a few weeks observing Ryo’s puzzling behavior, when he had finally realized exactly WHY Ryo had decided to give herself an impromptu haircut or why she had insisted she needed new clothes when hers seemed to still fit well.
When he had realized she had stopped wearing her dresses and only wore her overalls.
Yes. A good father and a good man would have immediately hugged his child and cried and patiently told her that, even though she was being nice and considerate, what she was doing was unnecessary.
But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to care enough or react in a meaningful way.
Not when, for the first time in weeks if not months, he wasn’t seeing a complete miniature of Ruri in front of him.
Not that Ryo’s resemblance was perfect, of course – she had his tan skin, his bushy eyebrows, a jaw line a little squarer than Ruri’s that she had inherited from him – but it was enough that he could have mistaken one for the other when looking at his late wife’s childhood pictures.
He didn’t know what his daughter had imagined, but seeing Ryo run around acting more and more like a little boy hadn’t brought him relief.
He had been too hollow for that.
The hole in his chest had been too big, too deep, sucking in all his emotions and leaving him blank but for sadness and apathy.
It shouldn’t have been so intense. Losing people was part of life, after all, and though you were allowed to grieve, it wasn’t healthy to cling so much to their memories, something he was perfectly aware of.
But nobody had ever taught him how to manage a ‘healthy’ mindset as a child himself, and it was too late to learn it in adulthood.
Perhaps, if his family history hadn’t been as messed up as it was… if he had found other people through life to support him… Perhaps he’d have managed his pain and his grief at losing his wife better.
Perhaps there were universes out of there where he did.
Here and now, though?
That wasn’t the case.
He had grown in a demanding and abusive household, mentally if not physically (and given how intense and demanding the martial arts training had been and how easily he was punished for mistakes, one could have doubts about the ‘physically’ part), one he had left behind eagerly the moment he had become an adult, cutting bridges without remorse.
(That hadn’t been kind for his siblings, he knew that, but he couldn’t stay, couldn’t let them decide his life for him any longer, and half of them were buying into that bullshit and he just. Couldn’t. No longer.)
Left adrift, emotionally, was it any wonder he had clung so hard to the one person he had felt could complete him, sooth him, slowly heal his wound and make him a better man?
Ruri had been all that.
She had become his rock, the center of his life on which he was building his future.
Perhaps he had been too depending even then… but Ruri had taken it in stride, only chiding him when she felt he was neglecting Ryo.
A brief, bitter burst of laughter escaped him.
He had done that even before Ruri died, hadn’t he?
Not often, and not in a way Ryo herself seemed to acknowledge, but…
He knew. And Ruri had known.
(He had but a handful of pictures of his daughter alone, without Ruri or her relatives standing with the little girl. How normal was that, especially for someone who had picked professional photography as a career?)
She had forgiven him anyway, because she knew him, knew it wasn’t intentional, knew he WAS trying and he had made progresses, so many progresses, and Ruri was here anyway, filling the cracks he might have accidentally left, and Ryo adored her Mom, adored him, loved to pester him with questions about animals and other countries and if she could go with him next and…
He swallowed.
It never should have come to that.
Things weren’t supposed to turn this way.
He was supposed to have a long, happy life beside his wife, his child(ren), his aging in-laws who showed him kindness, patch things up with his former girlfriend turned sister-in-law (which he had managed to. More or less. Hisami was rather prickly but given how much he had hurt her, albeit unintentionally, he couldn’t blame her), heal from his childhood trauma and prove himself a better man than his own father or Grandfather had been.
Instead, he was a wreck.
He had never expected to lose Ruri. Not like that. Not so soon. Not ever.
Not when they had been trying to extend their little family, give Ryo a little brother or sister to play and grow up with (she would have made a wonderful older sister, given how much she cared for everybody), another child to make Ruri’s smiles widen (she wanted a large family, three or four children to keep her hands busy and keep her company when he was away) and for him to get home to and laugh with (children he’d never abuse or try to mold into what they weren’t, unlike what his own parents had tried to do to him and his siblings).
(The irony he had allowed his child to mold herself into something else due to his own apathy wasn’t lost on him, and it only added to his feeling of failure. But it was too late now to show regret.)
It should have been so simple. So easy.
Instead, just as they were starting to seriously try, routine exams had found a tumor, and the path to hell had unveiled.
Cancer had no pity.
Often, it was treatable and though it wrecked havoc on the body and the mind, one could survive, albeit with a risk it may come back or with treatments to follow for the rest of your life. But who cared, so long you were alive?
Sadly, cancer could be pernicious and particularly aggressive.
Some took years to develop and take you to your grave.
Other brought you down in barely a couple of months.
The second type was the one his beloved wife had developed.
It had not mattered that Ruri was barely in her mid-twenties, that she was young, healthy, strong as a horse, opinionated, stubborn, a mother and a wife with a young child and a husband who relied on her. She had fought. Of course she had. Ruri had never been a quitter.
But in the end, she had lost.
She hadn’t let herself go, exactly, but… after the last round of treatment hadn’t worked and the exams had showed the progression of the disease, something in Ruri’s beautiful blue eyes had faded. She had asked questions (“How long do you give me?”), she had thanked the doctors, and she had smiled at him.
Ruri’s smiles had always been beautiful and they had always warmed him to the core.
(Ryo smiled like her...)
Not that time.
That time, he had felt his heart freeze and break in a thousand pieces.
With that smile, he knew she was already telling him ‘goodbye’.
She had accepted her eventual demise with a calm and a gracefulness he himself hadn’t been able to muster. How could he have? His wife, his treasure, half of his heart was going to die and they were all expecting him to just quietly accept it?
He couldn’t.
Even now, he just… couldn’t.
He had raged about it. Argued with her they could and should seek treatment at another clinic, innovative ones, get her part of trials for new therapy, find a way, if not to heal her, then to buy her time! Time, it’s all he wanted. Time with her. Time so he could keep hope. He had known it wouldn’t change anything in the long run, of course he had, but he hadn’t been ready to accept…
He could still remember Ruri’s hands firmly pressed on his (they were already looking thinner and paler than before, their strength fading) as she calmed him down, her voice soft and so… so bloody reasonable it had made him burst into tears like a little kid.
Ryo hadn’t seen all that. They had made sure she had sleepovers at her Grandparents’ whenever they needed to talk about Ruri’s health. Their baby girl had only been four but she had been very perceptive for a child her age and already distressed, sensing that something wasn’t right. It was bad enough she had known her Mom was sick. She hadn’t needed to know how bad it was, not yet – and she hadn’t needed to see her Dad break in front of her, to see her Mom pained as she tried (vainly) to comfort him.
She’d have time for that soon enough.
Pictures were put to dry, clothespins closing on the lines, each holding a square.
He was a bloody egoist.
He was so busy grieving ever since Ruri died that he had never let Ryo grieve herself, not as she should have.
What did his daughter hide behind her smiles even now?
He didn’t know.
He wasn’t sure he WANTED to know, either.
Gods, he was such a coward, he thought, shoulders sagging.
He needed to talk to Ryo eventually.
She couldn’t keep acting and dressing like a boy for his sake. No matter how much she tried, no matter how many times he slipped and called her ‘son’ instead of ‘daughter’ (and never, ever ‘wildflower’, Ruri’s nickname for her; some things were too sacred to touch), she was a little girl.
Nothing was going to change that.
Ryo was already ten; in one year or two, she’d start to develop breasts as her body entered puberty. She’d have monthlies, she’d gain curves as her hips widened (oh Gods, who was going to give her The Talk, or even talk about womanhood in general with her? He couldn’t do it! Would school’s classes on Health and Biology be enough, or should he ask Hisami or her mother to sit with Ryo? Or Kurokawa-sensei? A doctor would know best, right?), she’d become a teenager girl.
She’d have to wear skirts again, if only as part of her school uniform.
It couldn’t go on.
He was messing her up, he knew that.
But he couldn’t open his mouth and say stop, no matter how he tried.
Because if he told Ryo to act like a girl again, to stop being so self-sacrificing for his sake (she was, he knew she was. His daughter had a tomboy streak to begin with, but he had seen her eyes wander over hair accessories or modest but pretty summer dresses when going with her on shopping trips before she forcefully looked away and run into a sport store instead), then she…
She would.
She might grow her hair again until they were long enough to plait like Ruri’s. She might wear dresses like Ruri’s. She might…
Ryo wasn’t Ruri.
She never would be.
But she looked close enough it would be a torture, knowing the young woman in front of him wasn’t his wife.
His wife would forever be twenty-five.
Even if it took years for Ryo to catch up, she’d still be his mother’s spitting image until then.
She’d keep being so even as she aged.
It would be a torture, he repeated in his mind, eyes lost.
It already was.
A torture of his own making, from which Ryo was innocent.
Just another victim.
One he didn’t know how to save.
He didn’t even know how to save himself.
Pathetic.
There was a knock at the door. Ryo knew better than to open the darkroom when he was working. She had been taught very early on, by Ruri as much as by himself.
“Dad? Sorry to disturb you, but dinner should be ready in ten minutes. Also, you still haven’t told me what you wanted me to get a the shop tomorrow morning,” his daughter’s voice called and he forced himself to square his shoulders.
He was a coward, he could admit it to himself.
But not so much of a coward he would (or could) avoid his daughter entirely. Ryo was a child. An autonomous one due to circumstances, but still a child. Meals together and chatting over household chores meant a lot to her.
He could do that.
“I’m coming, son,” he let out despite himself, even if the word ‘daughter’ was practically burning his lips.
Daughter, daughter, you’re my daughter, you’re Sanada Ryo, you’re a girl, my little girl, what Ruri left me, the child we both treasured the moment Kurokawa-sensei put you in your mother’s arms, Ruri laughed and I cried the first time I held you because you were perfect, you’re still perfect, you don’t have to play pretend just to pacify me, my grief isn’t your burden to bear, you should yell at me for calling you ‘son’ instead of accepting it so easily, it’s not right, I never wanted things to get so bad, it’s not your fault, I’m a sick man, a pathetic man and I want to be better but I can’t and still even if I don’t show it enough I love you, sweetling, I do, don’t ever believe I don’t love you, my little Ryo, my daughter…!
“I’m coming,” he repeated and, so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes when he came out, he started to wipe his face furiously.