"I try. I really do, you know that, right?"
Yuriko could say nothing as her father examined her. Muddy hair, muddy shoes. Blood made modern art of her shirt and trousers. When Mr. Hokaze had heard the sirens, he warned her. Whether it had been the ambulance she called, or the police, galvanised by concerned residents in the area. Run, he had said. They'll never question a crazy old man and his dog. So, she ran. Emergency services would have questions, and she wouldn't have the answers. A notoriously bad combination. How could she explain what had happened, when she herself was lost? A crater deep enough to bury her future, and she had caused it. She couldn't fathom how anyone would assume that was her fault, but she knew that it looked bad. Even in her shock she could tell. And no one would think twice before pointing fingers at the creepy little albino girl. It didn't matter how she behaved at school. People took one look at her dead eyes and her scarred arms and came to their own conclusions. So, yes, she ran like a coward and left a freshly baked amputee to his fate. She even had the nerve to take the novel too. Her stomach turned.
"I try so hard to love you. Do you know how fucking hard that is?" Mr Suzushina lowered his face to hers. Contempt tugged at his lips; disgust creased his eyelids. "Do you know how hard you make it?"
Diminuendo. Adrenaline still reverberated in her brain but was growing quiet. The percussion of her heart no longer reached her ears. Her pulse was simmering to adagio. Yuriko's hands were shaking. She could almost breathe. Whatever that was, it's over now. But was it? Yuriko set her mind once again on the power that wriggled beneath her skin. It's over, she tried again, but it whispered no.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you" his fingers found purchase around her cheekbones as he jerked her head up.
Yuriko met a set of eyes that were so unlike her own. Brown, clear irises. Eyes that belonged to a collective. Earnest. Expressive and beautiful. Not other. Not inhuman. They took in her expression, her fear, and for a moment they softened. His countenance decayed.
"What happened to —" then cement set in his features. "No. What did you do?"
"I..." but just as she was finding her voice, his other fist found the wall.
"No! You think I'm fucking stupid, don't you? Don't tell me shit. I won't be done for whatever the hell you did. Get out!"
"Dad..." his fingers dug deeper into her cheeks.
"Haven't seen him."
"It hurts."
As the words fell, power rose like heat from her gut. It spread through her body like air diffusing through a room until it reached an equilibrium. She could feel her cheeks inflating with energy, as the pressure her father's digits exerted was rendered insufficient. Mr Suzushina's fingers pried themselves off her face.
If the man noticed what had happened, he gave no indication, but there was a shift in his daughter's perspective. As she stood there watching confusion bloom in her father's eyes, it became clear to her that for the first time, she had the man at a disadvantage. He hadn't been through what she had. He couldn't do what she had done, either. To her alarm clock; to the ground; to the creature. In her position, he would have been ripped to ribbons in its jaws. Since the moment her eyes opened, and the world became bizarre, the physical scale of power had been tilted irrevocably in her favour. And the shift emboldened her.
"I'll leave, but I'm taking some clothes with me first."
"You think you're in a position to make demands here?" he almost scoffed as he said that. The ghost of a smile playing at his lips.
"I think I'm in a position to plant evidence."
The smile dropped. He made an attempt to speak; it came out as a stutter. A sigh. Then a slap. She saw it coming — watched his hand crawl towards her in a well-worn trajectory. But this was no apex predator. The motion, for all the intent behind it, carried the weight of a paper tiger. She let it strike her to prove a point. To him, or to herself, she didn't know. The force rang uselessly against her face, as a crisp thwack shook the apartment imperceptivity.
Mr Suzushina looked Yuriko in the eyes, and for the first time he saw her. Red like a warning. Red like danger. Unique wherever in the world they could go. Beautiful the same way a yawning chasm was. They stared at him with all the indifference of a stranger, and he blinked.
"In fact, just by coming home, I already have," she pulled out the rolled up light novel she had tucked at the back of her shirt. "This was at the scene, oh," she looked down at the dirty tatami mat "and so was all this mud I'm tracking in. That's crazy."
"You..."
"And you're looking like an accomplice with your DNA on me. A loving father cradling the criminal's face for a job well done. We'd been planning that for weeks, after all."
"Bullshit."
"But it'd make a great story, don't you think?"
Neither spoke for a moment as the light reflected uselessly off the family portrait. Between Yuriko's absence in the frame, and the moment in the living room, there was little evidence of the girl she was supposed to be.
"I take a bag. I leave through the window. You didn't see me."
And with his nodded assent, Yuriko found herself homeless at the age of fourteen.