You Saved Me(Completed)

7|Pain and suffering

(Author: warning, parental, emotional, and physical abuse that may be upsetting to some readers)

When the six year old arrived home hours later, he was barefoot and had cuts on his feet. No one greeted him at home, the place was dark, and cold. The boy closed the door behind him, and automatically went to his father's study, where he knew his father would be.

He was right. There he was, writing something on his documents, a cup of what Gakushū guessed is coffee near his papers. The child just stared at his father doing his paperwork like normal, as if he didn't just recently abandoned a six year old on the side of the road fifty miles outside the city.

Did he even care?

Gakushū just quietly closed the door and went to the bathroom to find alcohol, cotton balls, and bandaids for his feet.

Fast forward to two years later. Gakuho decided Gakushū was mature enough to take on punishments for his every failure, and every wrong doing.

Once, Gakushū accidentally broke a vase, and Gakuho forced him to stand on the shards, biting on a cloth to stop himself from screaming.

When he was ten, he received ten lashes on his back because he had gotten into a fight and lost, and his report card showed that he was failing English and math.

Gakushū has a sister who was four years older than him, Nanami. She would come into his room every night and sing him lullabies, whispering comforts in his ear. He knew she had it worse, because she was the older sibling and was the heiress. He had witnessed their father whipping her back with his belt, her screams muffled by the cloth on her mouth. He also took every opportunity to belittle her, mock her.

He destroyed her only to build her back up and then destroy once again. It was an endless cycle.

"He loves us" their mother assured them. "He loves you. In his own, twisted way he cares, he's only doing this to make you stronger" Masami, their beloved mother, is well aware of the mental abuse.

But it was the physical abuse she had no clue of. That was because Gakuho only hit them whenever she was away on her long business trips. By the time she comes home their bodies were fully healed. Thanks to the doctors Gakuho brings over, they were never left with scars when their wounds healed.

Eventually, Gakushū started believing Masami's words about their father. That he was only doing this to make them stronger. "He cares" he thought. "In his own twisted way, he loves us"

This was what he repeated in his head as a coping mechanism. The belief that Gakuho actually cares and was just disciplining them. This kept him going.

Besides, it wasn't like he was entirely alone. He still has Nanami.

Nanami packed her belongings and left the house when she turned seventeen.

Thirteen year old Gakushū had caught her packing. He was frozen, standing in disbelief as he watched her hurriedly zipping up her luggages.

"So, you're leaving" he couldn't hide the anger and betrayal in his voice.

"How long do you intend to stay living like this?" She asked him.

Gakushū watched her get inside a cab, and that was the last time he saw her.

_______________________

Karma stared at Gakushū in disbelief. The boy telling his story was smiling coldly at the red head. "And the cutting?" He pointed at Gakushū's wrists.

"It's my new, healthier form of stress relief, my new coping mechanism" Gakushū said. "When someone harms themselves by cutting, burning, punching, or engaging in other forms of self-injury,without intending for death to be an end goal, they're engaging in what's known as non-suicidal self-injury" he explained. For Karma, Gakushū sounded as if he was reciting something from a book.

The strawberry blonde gazed at his bandaged arms. "I bet, father would tell me I deserve this"

"Why don't you report him?"

Gakushū snapped his head up with a sharp glare. "Report him?! Oh wow why haven't I thought of that?! "

Karma's eyes were trained to Gakushū's, he noticed the pain behind those violet orbs. The pain, the anger, the self hatred, the fear.

The two stared at each other in silence, Karma looking at his tearful, pain filled violet eyes, and Gakushū into his worried, understanding, golden eyes.

Then the red head stood up and left the room.

Gakushū curled himself to a ball, and his under the blankets, hating himself for showing his vulnerability to his rival, and hating his rival for seeing him that way.

Karma meanwhile, was opening the kitchen cabinets for anything to cook for Gakushū, all the while thinking on what he should do.

There is one thing, very clear in his mind. Though he doesn't know how he's going to do it.

But he knows, he needed to save this boy.