Open Wound

(Akane’s PoV)

—

I stared at the screen.

The message was short. Neat. Typed in that careful, formal way that adults of a certain generation used, as if the phone were a letter and not a piece of glass.

“Akane, did you receive the money this month?”

I read it once.

I read it a second time.

Then a third, because my brain had stalled somewhere around the fifth word and refused to finish translating the sentence into anything that made sense.

I blinked multiple times. That had to be a joke. A bad one.

The money.

The money had arrived on the sixth of every month since I left that house. It was how I paid my rent. It was how I ate. 

I had built a sealed box around the question of where it truly came from a long time ago, because some questions cost more than the answers are worth.

All I know was that it was a mutual agreement between me and my family.

I wanted to disappear from them, to not be associated with their disgusting name anymore, and my father and mother didn’t want a daughter.

In return, they had agreed to send me money every month so that I wouldn’t come back to their family and leave them alone with the golden boy.

I would finally be free from them, while they wouldn’t have someone who kept outshining their beloved “son”.

I didn’t receive any news from them except the bank transfer every month. Perfectly timely, like a subscription.

And now my mother — the woman who had not written me a single word in almost four years — was asking me if it had arrived.

Which meant she knew about the fact that Kenji came here.

Which meant — 

‘No.’

My mind went white. Not blank. White. Like a screen with too much light on it.

I immediately set the phone down on the counter. Face-down. Very carefully, as if it might go off.

Then I placed both palms flat against the wood, closed my eyes, and pulled a long breath in through my nose before the thing rising in my chest could reach my mouth.

Four seconds in. Four seconds out.

Again.

I couldn’t lose control. Not in front of the only person I could really call ‘family’.

The kitchen had gone silent around me. The kettle had stopped humming, the coffee had finished dripping, and somewhere at the edge of my awareness, Shin had gone very still.

“Akane—” he started, soft, taking a step around the counter.

“No.” My hand came up, palm flat, my eyes still closed. “Don’t. Stay there. Please. I need a minute. I need to calm down. Please.”

After my words, he stopped.

He just stayed where he was, and I felt his stillness across the room like a hand that wasn’t touching me, and I was grateful for it in a way I had no room to express right now.

I breathed.

Of all the things I had braced for in my life, this was not one of them. 

I had prepared for her silence lasting forever. I had prepared for a phone call from a hospital one day, and I had even prepared, in some buried drawer, for the possibility of an apology, so that I could be ready to tell her that I didn’t care.

But I had never once prepared for a question about money or rather, to be specific, something remotely close to caring about me.

It made no sense. It fit nowhere. And things that fit nowhere were the only things that could still hurt me.

After a few minutes, I opened my eyes.

I picked the phone back up and turned it over, half-convinced the message would be gone — a glitch, a misread, a wrong number wearing her name.

But no. It was still there with the words in the same order with her contact, unchanged after four years, sitting above a thread that was nothing but empty space and a date stamp from another life.

Then, I looked up at Shin.

“There’s no way she actually contacted me,” I said. My voice came out thin. Wrong. “This doesn’t make sense, Shin. None of this makes sense. Why — why after almost four years does she suddenly care about me? Why now? Why this? How does she even know about—”

The sentence broke off.

I stood there with the phone gripped tight in my hand and my throat doing something I didn’t want it to do, and the burn arriving at the corners of my eyes, and I hated it, I hated it, because I had promised myself years ago that this woman would never get another tear out of me.

During those moments, Shin didn’t say anything.

He didn’t know what to say — I could see that, I could see it in the small helpless shift of his shoulders — but he stayed exactly where I had told him to stay, his eyes on my face, present in that way of his that didn’t need words to work.

He was clearly worried about me.

And my feet, without asking me, took a step toward him.

Then another.

I stopped halfway across the kitchen, furious at my own legs.

“I don’t want to know,” I said. My voice cracked down the middle of the sentence. “No. I don’t. I don’t want to think about her, I don’t want to know why she texted, I don’t care what she wants. I just want to be with you right now. That’s all. Just you. You’re my family now.”

Shin looked at me for a long moment. I saw his mouth part slightly and his eyes widening.

And I watched something move behind his eyes — a slow, quiet understanding assembling itself piece by piece. 

Because he had noticed what I hadn’t said. 

There had been no contempt in my voice. No ice. No wolf. Only this raw, shaking, sound of a little girl that I didn’t recognize as mine.

“Akane,” he said, very quietly. “Can I ask you something?”

I didn’t answer, I just looked on the floor and grabbed my arm.

“Do you actually still care about her? Your mother?” He asked, his voice soft, but hit a deep spot inside of me.

After that question, the dam broke.

I didn’t decide. It was one careful sentence from him, and the thing I had been holding shut for four years with barber wire and my will simply gave way.

“I did,” I heard myself say, and my voice was already wet. “I did care. For years. Through everything. Every time he—“ I stopped, taking a deep breath before I spoke again. “…every time it happened, I still went to her afterward. I still crawled into her bed when I had the chance. I still believed that if I was quiet enough, small enough, good enough, one day she’d look at me and take my hand and we’d leave that house together. I believed it for years, Shin. Like an idiot. Like a stupid little girl waiting by a door.”

Shin didn’t move. His whole body was listening.

“Until the last time,” I said, and the room tilted somewhere behind my eyes. “The bad one. I was thirteen. Afterward, I went to her room in the middle of the night. I stood at the foot of her bed and I begged her. I told her we could go anywhere. I told her I’d take care of her. I was thirteen and I told my mother I would take care of her. I had learned everything in order to survive alone, and I didn’t care that she hated me. Whenever she got hit, I always stood up to help her.”

Then… my breath came apart.

“And she looked at me,” I whispered, “and she said — ‘If you had been born a boy, we would have been happy. You’re not my daughter anymore. Maybe you’ve never been. You’re just a reminder of my failure.’” I felt a strange grip around my heart.

After my words, Shin’s breath stopped. I heard it stop.

“That was the moment,” I said. “That exact moment. Standing in her bedroom in my nightgown. That was when the last ties between me and that house snapped. Not him. Her. He broke my body plenty of times, but she’s the one who — she’s the one—”

I couldn’t finish it.

“Why?” The word tore out of me. “Why?! What was wrong with me? What did I do? Why was it so wrong to be born as a girl?! I was a child — why wasn’t I enough for her to just — why?!”

And then he was there.

I don’t know which of us closed the distance. I just know that his arms came around me and my face hit his chest and I was crying — really crying, ugly and shapeless, the kind of cry that only Shin could see.

His hand was in my hair and his other arm was locked across my back and he was holding me together the way you hold something that is actively coming apart.

“Don’t leave me,” I sobbed into his hoodie. “Please, Shin. Please don’t leave me. Please—” I kept sobbing. “Don’t leave me, please. You’re my family. You’re the only one I have.” I repeated once again, burying my face into his chest even more.

Without realizing, my hands were gripping his hoodie too tightly, to the point that I was literally pulling him against me, forbidding him to move away.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said against my hair. His voice was low and completely steady. “Akane. Listen to me. I’m right here. I’m not leaving. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Do you hear me? I’m yours, remember?” 

I nodded against his chest, still shaking. 

“Say it back, please.” Shin said, his hand soothing my soul.

“I heard you,” I whispered.

“Again.” He demanded

“I heard you.” I spoke again, nuzzling into him 

He kissed the top of my head. Then my temple. Then the wet skin under my eye, slow and unhurried, mapping my face like a promise he didn’t need words for. 

His hand kept moving through my hair, and his other palm traced long, warm lines up and down my back, over and over, the same patient rhythm, until the shaking slowed, and then dulled, and then finally settled into the deep, hollowed-out stillness that comes after that kind of storm.

I don’t know how long we stood there.

Long enough for the front of his hoodie to be completely soaked. Long enough for the light through the window to shift its angle across the floor. Long enough that when I finally lifted my head, my whole body felt like it had been wrung out and hung up to dry.

I looked up at him with swollen eyes and a totally ruined face. 

I was a disaster, but he looked down at me like I was neither of those things.

“What am I supposed to do, Shin?” My voice came out hoarse and small.

He brushed a wet strand of hair off my cheek with his thumb.

“Answer her.” He said.

I froze and stared at him for a few, long minutes.

“What?” That’s all my mouth could say.

“Answer her,” he said again, calm and certain. “You need answers, Akane. You’ve been carrying this question on your back for four years — the why. It’s still in you. I just heard it. And the only person who can answer it is on the other side of that message.”

“Why should I?” The words came out sharp, disbelieving. “After what she said to me — why should I give her a single word? Why should I do anything for her?”

“It’s not for her.” Shin said, his voice decisive.

He held my face in both hands, gently, his thumbs at my cheekbones, and made me look at him.

“It’s for you. And—” a small, soft breath, almost a smile, “—because this is exactly how you saved me. You made me look at the things I’d been running from. You threw reality straight into my face and made me ask questions I never wanted to ask. And I know that you didn’t do it to hurt me. You did it because you knew I couldn’t heal while I kept my eyes closed. I had to taste the poison to find the real cure.”

Then, his forehead came down to rest against mine.

“And I’ll be right here,” he murmured. “The whole time. Whatever she answers. Whatever it turns out to be. When you put that phone down, I’ll still be standing in this kitchen. I promise. Don’t be afraid. That’s what you did for me.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

At his soaked hoodie. At the worry he was trying to keep out of his face and failing. At the absolute, stubborn steadiness of him.

He was right.

I hated that he was right, and he was right.

After his words, I let out one last shaking breath, wiped my face with the sleeve of his hoodie — my hoodie now, that battle was over — and stepped back just enough to reach the counter.

“Just… catch me if I’m going to pass out.” I said.

Shin smiled and said “don’t worry about that. I’ll be sure to save you. I don’t want to pay for your medical bills, you know?” 

“Dumbhead,” I said, smiling at him.

And then, I picked up the phone.

The message was still there, glowing patiently in the morning light, waiting, the way it had apparently been waiting for four years.

Akane, did you receive the money this month?

After reading it in last time, I unlocked the screen…

—

Author’s note: Thanks for reading until now ❤️