(no subject)
Mei knew she'd get in trouble sooner or later for blocking her father's number from her cell phone.
Eventually, he'd figure out that she was deliberately not answering her calls, and she had fully expected him to show up at her doorstep one day demanding explanations. She would be ready to give them, she figured, when the time came.
What she didn't expect was for the time to come in the middle of a campus-wide event. She almost spat her heart out when she heard his voice in the middle of the ball. He'd all but dragged her outside to "talk" - and she followed, albeit unwillingly, knowing that it was best to make a scene where fewer people could see it.
She also didn't expect it to escalate into the first full-scale fight she ever had with him.
There had been a lot she'd wanted to tell him and never found the courage. He was controlling, demanding, cold - years of living with this man and anyone would learn to fear him. But living away from her family, she supposed, had given her enough confidence to argue back - and it wasn't long before both had raised their voices. Her mother - who had tagged along in hopes of lessening the problem - and her pleas went unheard, and it was when she said (or sobbed, she couldn't tell anymore) in plain Japanese that she was ashamed of having such a man for a father that he finally lost what was left of his composure, and she felt a very sharp pain on her cheek.
It had been years since he'd last slapped her, and she couldn't remember it ever being this hard. Or at least, she couldn't remember having hit the ground from it until now.
"Know your place," he remarked, in their mother tongue, as conversations between her family invariably were, "You know nothing of shame."
Eventually, he'd figure out that she was deliberately not answering her calls, and she had fully expected him to show up at her doorstep one day demanding explanations. She would be ready to give them, she figured, when the time came.
What she didn't expect was for the time to come in the middle of a campus-wide event. She almost spat her heart out when she heard his voice in the middle of the ball. He'd all but dragged her outside to "talk" - and she followed, albeit unwillingly, knowing that it was best to make a scene where fewer people could see it.
She also didn't expect it to escalate into the first full-scale fight she ever had with him.
There had been a lot she'd wanted to tell him and never found the courage. He was controlling, demanding, cold - years of living with this man and anyone would learn to fear him. But living away from her family, she supposed, had given her enough confidence to argue back - and it wasn't long before both had raised their voices. Her mother - who had tagged along in hopes of lessening the problem - and her pleas went unheard, and it was when she said (or sobbed, she couldn't tell anymore) in plain Japanese that she was ashamed of having such a man for a father that he finally lost what was left of his composure, and she felt a very sharp pain on her cheek.
It had been years since he'd last slapped her, and she couldn't remember it ever being this hard. Or at least, she couldn't remember having hit the ground from it until now.
"Know your place," he remarked, in their mother tongue, as conversations between her family invariably were, "You know nothing of shame."