Mistake

The Akiyama's didn't really realize they were taking me in until school had gotten back from Winter break.

Despite Amai's mother, Kirie, being a nosy person, she was kind at heart, and rather laid back. She didn't like me using keigo with her, said it made her feel old.

Amai's father, Shinrai-san, a fisherman from Osaka who fancied sea life, had been travelling for a few months and would not be back until early Spring. A man I deeply respected the moment I did meet him.

Finding that I was homeless and lacking in education, Kirie wanted me to go to school with Amai and live with the Akiyama's.

The problem with school is that I was incapable of writing and could just barely read hiragana. It had never been taught to me. Strangely enough, when I did learn to write, I was left-handed. Superstitions be damned. Kirie got me a tutor to help me reach the level of education most ten-year-olds of the time had.

She didn't have to do that, and I appreciate everything she did for me then, for if not, I wouldn't be able to write this today. She never asked me about my past, or why I'd been on the pier.

Kirie Akiyama was the mother I didn't deserve, but needed nonetheless.

~

I was seventeen when I saw the mother I was given for the first time since she abandoned me at the pier.

A lot had changed since I was found by the Akiyama's. I had become stronger. Closer to a family that was originally not my own than ever capable with the one I was born with. I was filled with love. Not with the fear instilled by the woman who stood before me that day. Yet it still crept into me. Time does not always heal scars.

I had been at the grocery store in town, getting ingredients for hotpot. I recognized her instantly, thought she looked different than she had back then.

Her black hair was cut short, barely below her ears. She seemed thinner than when she left me.

Despite her weakness, I couldn't stop my body from shaking with fear and sadness and regret and need. I wanted her to love me.

Strangely, she was more afraid than I was.

"Mother." As I called to her, I saw her breath leave her, like she had become a husk. She was completely frozen in place by a word.

I wanted to ask her why she left me. Why she abandoned me to die on a Winter night that was much too close to freezing. Why wasn't I ever enough for her? Why was a birthmark and my grandmother's influence able to water down a mother's supposed love to the point where it never existed? But I didn't ask that.

"How is my brother?" I barely felt the words pass my lips and the husk spoke back.

"What brother?" Her words sounded dry and empty. I felt my right eye twitch.

"How is Kibō?" We were opposites, but equal. Where my words were wet, scalding, hers were dry and cold as the stones I stepped on to get to the Akiyama's.

"He ran away. He's no longer my son."

"You ran away from me. You left me. You were the way you are and he left you." I let loose a laugh so bitter my face hurt. I couldn't help the poison from spilling into my voice. "Karma."

Her expression didn't change and I suddenly felt as empty as she looked. Her voice was that of a child's when she spoke next.

"I don't regret leaving you to die." And as she said that, I realized something. Something that contradicted everything I'd thought to myself the past seven years.

"Neither do I." And every word of it was true.