Suicide Buddies

Everything But The Beast : A Bagel Recipe

(hello, bit of a different chapter this time, but hope u all enjoy :) per usual, this one's a bit--extremely--lengthy so bear with me)
(do vote if you do so wish. coincidentally, there was a thunderstorm where i live right after i published the last chapter so👀)

hemophobia (n.)

he·mo·pho·bia

The intense or irrational fear of blood.

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"I don't want to play violin anymore."

My mother blinked at me from across the table. Her eyes trained on me like she was taking a scalpel to my head, peeling back the skin to poke my brain and find what made me say such a thing.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I don't like it," I said. "And the teacher always yells at me no matter what I do."

Rika leaned back from the crossfire. My brother had the fortune of being absent in a summer program at Stanford at the time. 

My father, who was unfortunately there that summer, said, "You're not quitting."

"I don't like it," I pressed.

"So?"

"So why do I have to do it?" I was eleven. Why did eleven year olds have to think about anything more than the next day? "I hate it."

"Your teacher says you're doing well," my mom said, which was supposed to be an argument.

"I don't like it."

"You're going to quit all because you don't like it? That's not a reason," my father snapped.

"Why not? Hanna said she didn't like flute and she quit."

"So? You want to end up being a quitter like Hanna?" His black eyes swallowed me. "You're continuing violin. We don't raise quitters."

"I haven't gotten into Clemonte yet. I'm not leaving anything."

"And if you do? You're going to kill that opportunity?" my mother said. She shook her head. "Haruki. What's wrong with you? You do well in violin and it looks better when you stick with something."

Good impressions only.

I stood up, pushing my half-eaten dinner away. "I'm not doing violin anymore."

My father stood above me. "This isn't an argument. You have a lesson tomorrow morning, you're going."

"Iie," I said. No. Hiragana was for what you knew.

I knew I hated the violin.

My family gaped at me, the blunt words corroding the air. I stood and hoped I could stand firm enough my father wouldn't be able to move me.

But then his hand was flying and his words were cutting and his wedding ring scraped me across my cheek in a single blow. I fell to the ground and didn't get back up.