swine | ☆

● chapter 30. ○

CWs: mentioned domestic abuse/rape, talk of religion, panic attack of sorts (again...)

sorry for the wait yall. i put explanations on my message board most of the time so that's where you can check if the wait gets long. totally not an advertisement to follow me for message board notifications. totally not.

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Thirteen years ago

Dangerous. Indescribably dangerous, what Taeko was doing.

The rules he was breaking now had been nailed into his head for the past five years. For half a decade, Taeko has been reminded constantly: Don't go anywhere out of the house without me. Without Ituko.

Where was he now? Out of the house, deep into the forest, without Ituko. Taeko would have absorbed the moment, the atmosphere, a little more if he wasn't so scared. Scared of Ituko finding out, for one, but also scared for Jamie. She had never left the yard, either. The rules set for Taeko were hers as well.

Scared was perhaps not the word for it. An understatement, Taeko believed, when he could feel his pulse in his neck and he could no longer shout her name for doing so would only slow him down.

A cliff. Ituko had property on the mountain, so of course that would be the ideal location to drag Taeko to. Even if he somehow made it out of that God-forsaken cabin, what could he do? There had to be a trail somewhere, a dirt road somewhere else, for Ituko's plan to work. In the early years of Taeko's capture, Ituko still had to go to school, after all, to avoid suspicion, and Taeko hardly believed he would hike up a mountain with no pathway every day without fail.

But Taeko was never able to find a trail, or a dirt road, or anything. Only a steep cliff leading straight to a horrific demise. A demise that Taeko could only pray would not come to his daughter.

Where could she have gone? She was a small girl, and Taeko swore he had not taken too long to notice her absence while they were on the porch together. There's no way she could clear this much distance in that time frame. Right?

Just as Taeko had began to consider turning around and doing a better job at actually searching the forest, the trees came to an abrupt end. Just like that first escape all those years ago, there was a burst of light and fresh air. The dark-haired male nearly shrunk away from it as it burnt his retinas, unfamiliar as it was.

And then there was a voice, feminine and gentle.

"What are you doing up here all by yourself, sweetheart?"

Taeko's head snapped to the side, finding a blonde woman kneeling down in front of a dark-haired little girl. His dark-haired little girl. Of course, his first instinct was to run to her, but he wondered if it might do him some good to not look like a crazy person in front of this —

Wait.

Another person.

Everything came to an abrupt and terrifying standstill. Everything, save for Taeko's wildly beating heart. He walked slowly towards the two, relieved that it was Jamie who saw him first and immediately ran into his arms.

The woman who had been talking to her turned her attention onto Taeko, seeming to observe and compare his and his daughter's features. He could proudly say that neither Jamie nor Jonah held much of their mother's likeness, but the woman asked anyway.

"Is this your daughter?" she spoke with a subtle tilt of her head, her hands on her hips. She was tall (when compared to Taeko, at least) and, judging by her exposed arms in her gray tank-top, quite athletic. Her voice had a southern drawl to it, adding to how friendly she seemed.