My Modern Kaidan: Meibatsu

Chapter 3

So maybe waking nightmare is being a little dramatic, but things definitely haven't been the same since that fateful day a month and a half ago.

I somehow managed to pass midyear exams and now we're on summer break. While I could avoid a lot of my thoughts and feelings at school, the vacation has now made them unavoidable, suffocating the house in a fog that never burns away.

Despite my nightmare, we actually did turn the body of the woman we killed over to the police and were mostly forthcoming. A struggle did ensue and she was, for all intents and purposes, obsessed. But that was it. Just an otaku of my dad's gone mad, case closed.

And the giant omission, the girl named Sachi from my dad's past, is now a face I can't forget I saw.

Since the murder in the garden, I've now moved my bedroom to the other side of the house, facing the street, but on some nights I think I see her, outside of my own head, standing in the mist outside my house.

I won't say I'm obsessed, but I am disturbed.

And who wouldn't be after learning what I learned, even if it was from the lips of a crazy woman?

A part of me is resentful that she's been my only source for this information, because my dad is definitely not addressing it. He's been too busy with his record breaking success.

Once the otaku story got out to the press, my dad's popularity as a mangaka soared, and his newest tankōban was his best selling yet.

When he's not busy being successful, he's tiptoeing around me as though I'm some wilted flower about to lose its last petal. But that's not what I want. I want the truth, and I just might have a way to go about getting it.

You can vote or comment, or you can comment your vote on the following question:

Which of these would you use to execute a master plan?

a) Extortion

b) Blackmail

c) Crying until you got what you want

d) Shaolin monkey style