The Chikamori Legacy (The Sanitized Version)
Prologue - "Seeds of Dissent" Part I (Author's Note: "This is the clean, sanitized version with no links back to my blog - meaning no contraventions against rules) Vancouver, BC, Canada - 1988 ...
Forum Discussion
Chapter One: “Love and Loss” - Part X
Richmond, BC
https://i.imgur.com/MymlbPx.jpg
Haruo walked back into his own place without looking back. He was on his own and it happened to be just the way he liked it, nobody to answer to, no-one to nag him to death and above all, it was a place for him to be able to actually find some peace for the first time in his life. Grabbing the groceries he’d picked up on the way back home, he locked the door of the van, then carted the groceries to his humble abode. When he got the groceries into his fridge he was satisfied. He’d grabbed a burger from the local burger joint and had eaten so the groceries were more from the point of being able to cook something in the next few days.
Did he regret saying what he did to River? No. Because she would see in the years to come that it was the right choice for him. Why should he inflict the hurt and sorrow to her or others of connecting with someone who didn’t deserve the love that was offered. I’m not the right person for her, he kept rationalizing to himself. Getting into a relationship with me is the last thing she should even consider...if at all.
https://i.imgur.com/1jrmtoz.jpg
And maybe one of these days, he’d believe it deep down where he could shut off those negative emotions and feedback like a tap. He wished he could shut off the emotions of wanting someone to accept him for who he was and not try to make him over into something he wasn’t. Because ultimately, it wasn’t meant to be and maybe people should give up on him before they got sucked into the abyss. He felt like he should go through life alone. And if life chose to cancel him short of his due date, then so be it.
Haruo ate, then took a shower and went to bed; a rest that would prove less than fruitful because of dreams from the past and how he'd been psychologically tortured by Mayumi.
Flashback
https://i.imgur.com/U1oITnu.jpg
Sleep did not come quickly for Haruo considering the fact that he was harassed by dreams that took him back to his toddler days as a three year old with Mayumi perpetrating her cruelty on him by sticking him in a crib and letting him yell his head off because she would ignore him for hours, only after being sufficiently neglected, he would be fed and his mother would make it seem like the most onerous task in her life to have to take care of him. She had her teaching career and far be it for this worthless worm to keep her from achieving what she wanted in life.
The scene abruptly switched to his childhood, when River had stepped into his life for the first time. They had just come home from the park after playing for a bit after school. Since he was tired of doing homework at home, he’d worked on the homework during the course of the day trying to predict what the teacher was going to assign them and working on the problems during recess and lunch break just so that he could get some time to enjoy after school.
https://i.imgur.com/c1fKBPK.jpg
His body tossed and turned in sleep as he relived that afternoon.
By the time they got home to their house, they were sweaty and tired. But River had homework that she had to do so she set about doing it.
https://i.imgur.com/SxqiAP4.jpg
There was nothing more boring than multiplication and addition tables, but well, that was how one learned back in 1977. Mimeographed sheets with blue ink that could potentially smear if it wasn't fully dry. And one could smell the ink used. It was a pungent odour that permeated the nostrils and that was the scent that told you that you have homework. But River being a diligent student sat at the table and no matter how boring it was, she put her effort into learning her addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables. And the worksheet gradually filled up with carbon scoring as her pencil made lines and squiggles denoting numbers filling up the answers to the equations asked. And afterwards she was able to take some time to learn BASIC on the computer
https://i.imgur.com/IOnt1mJ.jpg
Haruo, on the other hand, having done his homework already lay on the bench and slept after a hard day of school and then playing soccer at the park.
https://i.imgur.com/g2ghGFI.jpg
...and that was where Mayumi found him stretched out on the bench in the backyard asleep. "Just what do you think you're doing?!" Mayumi screeched. "Don't you have ay homework to do? Why are you being lazy and not doing your homework like…"
https://i.imgur.com/Wro3My6.jpg
"I DID MY HOMEWORK!" Haruo snapped back.
https://i.imgur.com/E2nS9Py.jpg
"Don't you talk back like that at me...young man! I'm sure you're just lying to me. If your teacher didn't give you homework, I'll give you twenty sheets of equations that you can do."
https://i.imgur.com/nOIHFka.jpg
"...and you'll get that every night for a week until you learn to not talk back to your betters." Mayumi looked smug as she looked at him with her beady eyes. "No son of mine is going to lie to me." Haruo looked frustrated and angry as he had done his homework and the fact that he was being called a liar even when he was telling the truth made him angry beyond belief. "You can start your twenty pages of equations tomorrow but for now, you can sit on that chair on the porch and think about what you said and about your lying to me."
https://i.imgur.com/C0VWQ1N.jpg
Haruo could only fume impotently as he stalked off to sit down in the chair and wish that his mother could disappear. When River got finished her homework, he defiantly got up out of his seat and walked over to the bench to sit with River. River could tell something was wrong with Haruo. "Your mom?" was all she asked.
https://i.imgur.com/e9UeXcp.jpg
"She thinks I've lied about doing my homework...and now I get to do twenty sheets of questions for a week...because she says that I talked back to her." Haruo aired his grievances about his mother to River who nodded patiently. River thought to herself that she was really starting to not like Haruo's mother.
https://i.imgur.com/flCiXbD.jpg
"River, I don't know how I'm going to put up with this for another twelve years..." Haruo frustratedly waved his hands and looked up to the sky. "It's like she hates me or something. It's not the twenty pages of questions...I have to do...but she's doing this so that I can't spend time with you." he looked over at her, anger on his face. "And she knows that I like to go to the park with you and everything. So she's trying to stop me from doing that. It's so unfair..." he said. "I don't think she even likes me."
https://i.imgur.com/QTXtYDG.jpg
River nodded as she stared at the grass and contemplated Haruo's words. "I know you did your homework at school because I saw you in the school library before we headed to the park, but the unfair part of it is that even if I tell her she won't believe me." And that simple fact made River hate Mayumi too. She was always picking on her son, if not heckling him; out right denigrating him for even breathing the same air as she had to stand in.
https://i.imgur.com/LqK4qmk.jpg
Trying to deal with this kind of harassment from his own mother would set anyone at the end of their rope and Haruo looked frustrated to the point where he was about to curl up in a ball and cry out of frustration. As a child of seven, he shouldn't have had to deal with this kind of behavior, especially out of his own mother. Mayumi wasn't fair and she had a chip on her shoulder and a focus for her negative behavior and River was sick of it. Even if she couldn't place a word on how she felt about Haruo as a friend, she was protective of him and only wanted him to be happy. It was a pity that his own mother couldn't feel the same way.
https://i.imgur.com/GQvHgbK.jpg
"I don't know what to do..." Haruo said...sounding half as if he was about ready to break-down and half like he was about to go nuclear. And River understood completely.
https://i.imgur.com/TmB4Ud5.jpg
“I'm your friend, Haruo...When you feel like this...talk to me." River said. "That way you don't get so ticked off." She said, "I can't do anything about the extra homework, but I can be someone you can talk to.
https://i.imgur.com/J6BrYmC.jpg
We can sit here together and dream about what it would be like to travel the world and see different things. If we were able to do that. Where would you want to go?"
https://i.imgur.com/hRWwD7C.jpg
"...anywhere..." Haruo said, a hint of vehemence evident in his tone. "Anywhere away from here and away from my mother." River figured as much and Mayumi wasn't going to like the fact that she would be losing her meal-ticket. She sort of got the impression that Mayumi was just grooming Haruo in order to leech from him. She could see the distinct difference between how her mother treated her and Haruo's mother treated him. The difference was like night and day. Her mother treated her like the most precious thing in the world and Haruo's mother treated him like the dirt under her shoes.
https://i.imgur.com/PSsvpKW.jpg
But to get her friend's mind off that she said dreamily, "I'd want to go visit France and the Eiffel Tower." she paused, "That would be like a dream vacation, y'know. Being able to see everything that France has to offer."
Haruo nodded, even though he was more of a homebody, he thought about going sightseeing around the world. However he was more cautious about things. The only people he trusted in his life were his father, River and Fiona who behaved more like a mother should to him as well as to her own daughter.
There were other instances of abuse. Pyschological mind-twisting, telling him that he wasn’t intelligent, constantly comparing him to others to split him in his mind from others. Isolating in order to keep him from having any sort of supports.
https://i.imgur.com/Emr17Us.jpg
"I don’t care if she lives here, you stay away from that McIrish girl. She’s not a good influence." Haruo’s sense of justice versus his mother’s treatment of him and her denigration of all his friends warred with his mental stability and his sense of self got diminished to the point where he just became a unwitting pawn of whatever his mother wanted. But River didn’t want to stay away from him and made it a point to make sure that she was always there at lunch and at recess and as they grew into their high-school years, their study blocks. Even if they were unable to hang out the way they used to back when they were little kids, before Mayumi decided that she was going to do whatever she could to make Haruo’s life a living hell. And Haruo made it a point of sneaking away from the house sometimes on the weekends, while River would casually ask her mother if she could step out of the house and head over to the park or to the playground for a while. Fiona nodded knowingly as she knew that was where Haruo was going to be.
https://i.imgur.com/R7s4QM7.jpg
Snapping back to the present day, Haruo came awake as he heard the alarm go off, uttering a pungent oath that could curdle milk. He did not like mornings at all, especially not after the last day he had. Taking a deep breath he gathered himself up from out of his blankets and yawned deeply as he realized that the time was almost five in the morning. If he was going to make his new property work for him, he would end up having to get up early and work hard to make his property viable. The property was large enough that if he picked the right crops to plant, he could make a decent amount of a living from the sale of the crops. I need a shower. Haruo thought to himself as he pulled his legs towards him, shifted to get up and placed both feet on the floor. It was an annoyance, what he’d gone through yesterday and he was still annoyed to a certain extent. But as his father had promised him, the double-wide was his refuge that he had sole occupancy of. After all, Haruo had purchased it with his own money and he didn’t want other people living in there at all really.
https://i.imgur.com/w6gRLJ5.jpg
Then getting dressed he made his way to the kitchen where he made his morning breakfast of orange pancakes. It was one of the morning staples that invigorated him; the aroma of oranges and a little dash of orange zest permeating his little space of a double-wide. His first true home that he could call his own.
https://i.imgur.com/aCDzYrZ.jpg
He took a long moment to gaze at his nearly empty living room. He was going to have a major problem when it came down to buying furniture. Or he could just scrounge it from the local dumpsters. Others were in a habit of throwing out perfectly good furniture when it no longer fit their aesthetic – so why not take advantage of the situation and snag some pieces at a good price. And it couldn’t get any better than free.
Richmond, BC
https://i.imgur.com/MymlbPx.jpg
Haruo walked back into his own place without looking back. He was on his own and it happened to be just the way he liked it, nobody to answer to, no-one to nag him to death and above all, it was a place for him to be able to actually find some peace for the first time in his life. Grabbing the groceries he’d picked up on the way back home, he locked the door of the van, then carted the groceries to his humble abode. When he got the groceries into his fridge he was satisfied. He’d grabbed a burger from the local burger joint and had eaten so the groceries were more from the point of being able to cook something in the next few days.
Did he regret saying what he did to River? No. Because she would see in the years to come that it was the right choice for him. Why should he inflict the hurt and sorrow to her or others of connecting with someone who didn’t deserve the love that was offered. I’m not the right person for her, he kept rationalizing to himself. Getting into a relationship with me is the last thing she should even consider...if at all.
https://i.imgur.com/1jrmtoz.jpg
And maybe one of these days, he’d believe it deep down where he could shut off those negative emotions and feedback like a tap. He wished he could shut off the emotions of wanting someone to accept him for who he was and not try to make him over into something he wasn’t. Because ultimately, it wasn’t meant to be and maybe people should give up on him before they got sucked into the abyss. He felt like he should go through life alone. And if life chose to cancel him short of his due date, then so be it.
Haruo ate, then took a shower and went to bed; a rest that would prove less than fruitful because of dreams from the past and how he'd been psychologically tortured by Mayumi.
Flashback
https://i.imgur.com/U1oITnu.jpg
Sleep did not come quickly for Haruo considering the fact that he was harassed by dreams that took him back to his toddler days as a three year old with Mayumi perpetrating her cruelty on him by sticking him in a crib and letting him yell his head off because she would ignore him for hours, only after being sufficiently neglected, he would be fed and his mother would make it seem like the most onerous task in her life to have to take care of him. She had her teaching career and far be it for this worthless worm to keep her from achieving what she wanted in life.
The scene abruptly switched to his childhood, when River had stepped into his life for the first time. They had just come home from the park after playing for a bit after school. Since he was tired of doing homework at home, he’d worked on the homework during the course of the day trying to predict what the teacher was going to assign them and working on the problems during recess and lunch break just so that he could get some time to enjoy after school.
https://i.imgur.com/c1fKBPK.jpg
His body tossed and turned in sleep as he relived that afternoon.
By the time they got home to their house, they were sweaty and tired. But River had homework that she had to do so she set about doing it.
https://i.imgur.com/SxqiAP4.jpg
There was nothing more boring than multiplication and addition tables, but well, that was how one learned back in 1977. Mimeographed sheets with blue ink that could potentially smear if it wasn't fully dry. And one could smell the ink used. It was a pungent odour that permeated the nostrils and that was the scent that told you that you have homework. But River being a diligent student sat at the table and no matter how boring it was, she put her effort into learning her addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables. And the worksheet gradually filled up with carbon scoring as her pencil made lines and squiggles denoting numbers filling up the answers to the equations asked. And afterwards she was able to take some time to learn BASIC on the computer
https://i.imgur.com/IOnt1mJ.jpg
Haruo, on the other hand, having done his homework already lay on the bench and slept after a hard day of school and then playing soccer at the park.
https://i.imgur.com/g2ghGFI.jpg
...and that was where Mayumi found him stretched out on the bench in the backyard asleep. "Just what do you think you're doing?!" Mayumi screeched. "Don't you have ay homework to do? Why are you being lazy and not doing your homework like…"
https://i.imgur.com/Wro3My6.jpg
"I DID MY HOMEWORK!" Haruo snapped back.
https://i.imgur.com/E2nS9Py.jpg
"Don't you talk back like that at me...young man! I'm sure you're just lying to me. If your teacher didn't give you homework, I'll give you twenty sheets of equations that you can do."
https://i.imgur.com/nOIHFka.jpg
"...and you'll get that every night for a week until you learn to not talk back to your betters." Mayumi looked smug as she looked at him with her beady eyes. "No son of mine is going to lie to me." Haruo looked frustrated and angry as he had done his homework and the fact that he was being called a liar even when he was telling the truth made him angry beyond belief. "You can start your twenty pages of equations tomorrow but for now, you can sit on that chair on the porch and think about what you said and about your lying to me."
https://i.imgur.com/C0VWQ1N.jpg
Haruo could only fume impotently as he stalked off to sit down in the chair and wish that his mother could disappear. When River got finished her homework, he defiantly got up out of his seat and walked over to the bench to sit with River. River could tell something was wrong with Haruo. "Your mom?" was all she asked.
https://i.imgur.com/e9UeXcp.jpg
"She thinks I've lied about doing my homework...and now I get to do twenty sheets of questions for a week...because she says that I talked back to her." Haruo aired his grievances about his mother to River who nodded patiently. River thought to herself that she was really starting to not like Haruo's mother.
https://i.imgur.com/flCiXbD.jpg
"River, I don't know how I'm going to put up with this for another twelve years..." Haruo frustratedly waved his hands and looked up to the sky. "It's like she hates me or something. It's not the twenty pages of questions...I have to do...but she's doing this so that I can't spend time with you." he looked over at her, anger on his face. "And she knows that I like to go to the park with you and everything. So she's trying to stop me from doing that. It's so unfair..." he said. "I don't think she even likes me."
https://i.imgur.com/QTXtYDG.jpg
River nodded as she stared at the grass and contemplated Haruo's words. "I know you did your homework at school because I saw you in the school library before we headed to the park, but the unfair part of it is that even if I tell her she won't believe me." And that simple fact made River hate Mayumi too. She was always picking on her son, if not heckling him; out right denigrating him for even breathing the same air as she had to stand in.
https://i.imgur.com/LqK4qmk.jpg
Trying to deal with this kind of harassment from his own mother would set anyone at the end of their rope and Haruo looked frustrated to the point where he was about to curl up in a ball and cry out of frustration. As a child of seven, he shouldn't have had to deal with this kind of behavior, especially out of his own mother. Mayumi wasn't fair and she had a chip on her shoulder and a focus for her negative behavior and River was sick of it. Even if she couldn't place a word on how she felt about Haruo as a friend, she was protective of him and only wanted him to be happy. It was a pity that his own mother couldn't feel the same way.
https://i.imgur.com/GQvHgbK.jpg
"I don't know what to do..." Haruo said...sounding half as if he was about ready to break-down and half like he was about to go nuclear. And River understood completely.
https://i.imgur.com/TmB4Ud5.jpg
“I'm your friend, Haruo...When you feel like this...talk to me." River said. "That way you don't get so ticked off." She said, "I can't do anything about the extra homework, but I can be someone you can talk to.
https://i.imgur.com/J6BrYmC.jpg
We can sit here together and dream about what it would be like to travel the world and see different things. If we were able to do that. Where would you want to go?"
https://i.imgur.com/hRWwD7C.jpg
"...anywhere..." Haruo said, a hint of vehemence evident in his tone. "Anywhere away from here and away from my mother." River figured as much and Mayumi wasn't going to like the fact that she would be losing her meal-ticket. She sort of got the impression that Mayumi was just grooming Haruo in order to leech from him. She could see the distinct difference between how her mother treated her and Haruo's mother treated him. The difference was like night and day. Her mother treated her like the most precious thing in the world and Haruo's mother treated him like the dirt under her shoes.
https://i.imgur.com/PSsvpKW.jpg
But to get her friend's mind off that she said dreamily, "I'd want to go visit France and the Eiffel Tower." she paused, "That would be like a dream vacation, y'know. Being able to see everything that France has to offer."
Haruo nodded, even though he was more of a homebody, he thought about going sightseeing around the world. However he was more cautious about things. The only people he trusted in his life were his father, River and Fiona who behaved more like a mother should to him as well as to her own daughter.
There were other instances of abuse. Pyschological mind-twisting, telling him that he wasn’t intelligent, constantly comparing him to others to split him in his mind from others. Isolating in order to keep him from having any sort of supports.
https://i.imgur.com/Emr17Us.jpg
"I don’t care if she lives here, you stay away from that McIrish girl. She’s not a good influence." Haruo’s sense of justice versus his mother’s treatment of him and her denigration of all his friends warred with his mental stability and his sense of self got diminished to the point where he just became a unwitting pawn of whatever his mother wanted. But River didn’t want to stay away from him and made it a point to make sure that she was always there at lunch and at recess and as they grew into their high-school years, their study blocks. Even if they were unable to hang out the way they used to back when they were little kids, before Mayumi decided that she was going to do whatever she could to make Haruo’s life a living hell. And Haruo made it a point of sneaking away from the house sometimes on the weekends, while River would casually ask her mother if she could step out of the house and head over to the park or to the playground for a while. Fiona nodded knowingly as she knew that was where Haruo was going to be.
https://i.imgur.com/R7s4QM7.jpg
Snapping back to the present day, Haruo came awake as he heard the alarm go off, uttering a pungent oath that could curdle milk. He did not like mornings at all, especially not after the last day he had. Taking a deep breath he gathered himself up from out of his blankets and yawned deeply as he realized that the time was almost five in the morning. If he was going to make his new property work for him, he would end up having to get up early and work hard to make his property viable. The property was large enough that if he picked the right crops to plant, he could make a decent amount of a living from the sale of the crops. I need a shower. Haruo thought to himself as he pulled his legs towards him, shifted to get up and placed both feet on the floor. It was an annoyance, what he’d gone through yesterday and he was still annoyed to a certain extent. But as his father had promised him, the double-wide was his refuge that he had sole occupancy of. After all, Haruo had purchased it with his own money and he didn’t want other people living in there at all really.
https://i.imgur.com/w6gRLJ5.jpg
Then getting dressed he made his way to the kitchen where he made his morning breakfast of orange pancakes. It was one of the morning staples that invigorated him; the aroma of oranges and a little dash of orange zest permeating his little space of a double-wide. His first true home that he could call his own.
https://i.imgur.com/aCDzYrZ.jpg
He took a long moment to gaze at his nearly empty living room. He was going to have a major problem when it came down to buying furniture. Or he could just scrounge it from the local dumpsters. Others were in a habit of throwing out perfectly good furniture when it no longer fit their aesthetic – so why not take advantage of the situation and snag some pieces at a good price. And it couldn’t get any better than free.
Featured Places
