Reflect || Toge Inumaki x Oc (Female)

Chapter 26: What He Did

ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ...♡

"You already know I can't stand him. It's a little unfair of me to keep secrets from you, and it might help relieve my stress... Do you care if I overshare?"

"Not at all."

"Well... I guess the earliest thing I remember is how he would look at me when my mom wasn't around. He glared horribly, but I didn't realize it was at me initially. A good father loves their child no matter what, especially when they are young enough to have done nothing wrong on purpose.

"I was probably just starting school when he became extra aggressive towards me. Always out of my mom's sight, he would yell at me, force me away, and take out his anger on me. I never knew what I had done wrong, so I just stayed quiet and locked myself in my room when he became upset. It was safe in there.

"And then my mom started to cry one day after they had picked me up from my babysitter. I didn't know at the time but she had just lost my unborn brother to a miscarriage. He was grieving too, but he never cried. He yelled at me, smashing our dishes onto the floor and I still didn't know what I had done wrong.

"My mom became infertile after that, and I never had a brother. Things were more calm after that, and I tried my luck at hugging him to show him that I was sorry for whatever I had done.

"That day he was working outside in the garden on his knees, his back at the perfect height for me since I was still small. I laid myself against the back of him without warning, and I immediately felt him tense.

"I backed away, but he didn't yell this time. He stared at me before he returned to the garden. But later, he took me out to the shops... He took me to a barber. He told them I was his son, and that I needed a haircut. And then it was all gone, all my hair I had been growing out since I was a baby.

"My mom was stunned at first, but she didn't yell at him, she was too afraid to stand up against a man again. Her previous boyfriends had hurt her and she didn't want to risk him getting aggressive in front of me. She lied, saying that she liked it, even though all of my hair had been buzzed off against my wishes.

"Then he started to dictate what I wore to school. It was public, so I didn't have a uniform and I thought I could wear a dress one day since it was hot. But before I left the house, he took one look at me in my dress and told me I had to change, that I wasn't allowed to wear dresses.

"Years went by with the same treatment, and I was starting to pick up on why he hated me so much.

"He took me to a shooting range when I was in junior high, telling me that I had to start training for a sport now or I would never catch up to the other boys. I told him I wasn't a boy, and he didn't like that answer. He told me that he knew it. He forced that shooting range on me just about everyday, and I failed again and again just to spite him. A thought also came to me once that if I was a good gunman, he would enlist me in the military.

"He became even more aggressive, yelling at me the moment we got in his car to go home. He complained about how I was a waste of his time, and then he would send me to my room for the rest of the night. Sometimes I would just sit there in the dark, questioning if I was really that awful of a child. I also started to doubt that "all parents love their children unconditionally."

"I started to grow out my hair at that point and change my clothes the second I got to school. People make fun of someone different than them, so I had to secretly dress like a girl away from his eyes.

"I thought about telling my mom, but it didn't come up until my final year at home. She started to connect the dots and she got in contact with my father's lost sister. Yuki told me everything I was missing.

"She told me that he always found women inferior and he only ever wanted a son. He stopped talking to her after she became a stronger sorcerer than him, and she thought it was because he didn't want her influence on his unborn daughter.

"After Yuki started to train me in sorcery, I stayed away from home a lot more. I became less stressed and I felt more like myself. He had wanted me to become the son he never had but Yuki just helped me be her niece.

"When school let out each day, I would find Yuki at the river with Garuda and she would teach me everything she could about fighting curses. She took me back to the shooting range and I found that I was pretty good at it after all, so I practiced. She later got in contact with Gojo, and they enrolled me here.

"I stayed at home for the first couple weeks of school just to keep my transfer under wraps. My mom helped me with everything, and when the day came, she sent me here with Ijichi."

Kaori stared at the floor after she was done speaking, her breath was quick from the words she let spill so rapidly. Her knees were shaking and her eyes were burning.

"She told me they got a divorce soon after I left, but I should have known that she would cave in after her money ran out. She always relied on his salary, but I never thought she would go back to him..."

The girl had her hands gripped tightly on the edge of his mattress, his sheets bunched up in her emotional palms. Laying his hand delicately on top of hers, he let her silently know that he was there for her.

No tears fell from her eyes this time as she was trying desperately to hold it together. So many had fallen earlier, and she didn't want to cry about her father any longer.

Her eyes looked over to meet his. They were the same soft, hazel brown eyes she always saw on him.

"Thank you," he said to her, earning back a question.

"For what?"

"For trusting me with your past," he replied, pulling her second hand over to him, holding one of hers in each of his. "I'll prove that I love you, I promise."

Her heart stopped, wondering how he picked it up so easily.

"I just... don't see how someone could really love me."

She looked away but her eyes only landed back on his. His hand pulled her back to face him, and he held his pinky finger in between them both.

"I promise."

It was something difficult for her to say yet she wanted him to feel the same way he made her feel: warm, protected, and important.

She just needed a little more proof and a little more time. That time would make her sure of both their survival in the terrible world they lived in. She didn't want either of them to be without the other.

As their pinkies clasped together, they shook on it, a promise to prove Toge's feelings.

"Good," he said, a winning smile on his features. "Now, no one knows we are back so soon, do you want to stay here? I have video games for us and snacks so we don't even have to leave the room."

The idea seemed planned out ahead of time, and with the fragile state of Kaori's mentality at the moment, a deep conversation with anyone other than Toge seemed undesirable.

"Okay..." she trailed off, starting to smile before she began to overthink. "But what about when I need to change? There's no where to go in here..."

His cheeks flushed, but he laughed it off, "I won't look!" he smiled.

Laughing along with him, she agreed to stay. A relaxed, fun night was definitely something she needed right now, and with the right person, it wouldn't be too unpleasant.

She pulled him into a hug, her arms wrapped around his soft hair in a thankful way. He breathed in her scent, holding her tightly before sighing and letting go. "Mario Kart?" he asked, a dumb smile on his face.