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By the timethey got home they’d been stuck in an awkward silence for an hour. Sabina was the first to get out of the car grabbing Kahlia’s hand she quickly entered the house. Raijin followed slowly behind, lucky for them Sakai-san was out. The two had decided without saying a word they needed a moment to themselves. One to deal with what had just occurred and the other to digest that what he’d hoped would last for a longer time had been destroyed with a single outing.
Sabina
The day went along like normal, Sabina spending time with Kahlia in the kitchen as they attempted to assist Sakai with making little cakes. Sitting at the table, she slowly turned the spoon in tea lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice Sakai set a bowl of strawberries before her.
“A yen for your thoughts,” he asked
She looked up at him, only to see calm inquiry in his expression. Sighing, she stopped stirring her drink and leaned back in the chair. “It’s not like you don’t know,” she said averting her eyes she stared at her feet. “I truly don’t care about his past, but…” She trailed off unsure of how to finish her thought.
“You know that the past affects him,” Sakai finished, pulling a chair out and taking a seat. He watched Kahlia, who stood on step stool, her little hands picking strawberries from the strainer as she cleaned them.
Sabina nodded feeling a wealth of complicated emotions overcome her. “I shouldn’t push because there are things I don’t want to talk about. I have things I’ve hidden from him, and it feels wrong trying to make him tell me his secrets.”
“Do you want to know in order to hurt him?” Sakai asked.
She looked at him in surprise, before giving a firm shake of her head. “No.”
“What is the reason you want to know then?” Sakai asked, grabbing a paring knife from atop the cutting board near his arm. Picking out one of the many strawberries, he started cutting off the tops.
“I want to help him,” she admitted, her voice low. “I don’t want him to be weighed down or ashamed of his past.”
“There isn’t anything wrong with that, you aren’t trying to harm him or throw the past in his face.” Sakai said placing each cleanly cut strawberry aside. “What dictates whether something is good or not is a person’s intent. And Raijin senses in you, that your intent isn’t against him but for him.”
Contemplating the elderly male in front of her, Sabina stood pushing the chair back. “I’m going to talk to him.”
Sakai smiled, placing his knife aside he stood and walked over the kitchen cabinet and opened it pulling out a small brown plate. “When Raijin was small, he loved strawberries.” Returning to the table, he moved a few to the plate and grabbing a fork he placed it across it. “See if he still loves them as he did then.”
Taking the plate, she offered him a look of thanks before leaving the kitchen. She wasn’t sure if Raijin would open up to her, but she didn’t want him to think he was alone.
Walking to the back of the house, she found herself in the rock garden with its seemingly randomly placed bamboo. Walking out onto the porch, she looked across to find Raijin sitting on the edge of the wide porch. Pressing her lips together in determination, she approached him making her away around half the yard. Stopping a few steps away, she sat down placing the plate between them.
Together they watched the branches sway as the sound of wood knocking against wood created a steady rhythm around them. For a few minutes the two of them didn’t speak, both afraid of what the other would say.
Growing colder, Sabina rubbed her hands together. The sweater she wore had been working but after ten minutes it was losing the fight. As the light of day darkened, she wondered if he’d say anything.
Raijin
“I was abandoned by my mother,” Raijin started.
She stiffened, looking at him in surprise.
He didn’t look at her keeping his gaze on the swirls of the rock sand below the porch. “Back then Ogre’s were strict about fraternizing with humans and my mother broke that law. She slept with a human and had me. I never knew his name, he died shortly after I was born, and she was forced to return to the main family home. Our Clan didn’t approve of me, the half-human child and terrorized her, treating her lower than a servant.”
“Is that the woman?” Two ogre women whispered, as Raijin’s mother walked past, holding three-year-old Raijins hand, she made her way past them pretending to not hear them. “Look how far the heiress has fallen.”
They snickered, hearing their words Raijin looked up at his mother only to feel fear. At the look of distaste his mother wore looking down at him. “Disgusting.”
She snatched her hand away. Leaving him to chase after her only for him to fall scraping his knees and hands, he cried but no one helped him stand.
“That monster is crying, how disgusting.” The women cackled leaving him alone and cold on the ground.
“I was never a part of them. Always separate, my face and skin making me more human than Ogre.” Lifting a hand, he covered his mask, his eyes squinted. “Ogre’s wear mask to have human faces, to meld in but usually their true gruesome faces are on display around family. For me, I had to wear a mask even around them.”
A hand tightened around his throat, “You look so much like him.” His mother hissed; she never said it with kindness. His face was a curse to her, she had lost so much because of him and his face was the reminder of the man she’d lost everything for. “Cover it.” She yelled, throwing him from her, breathing heavily her skin turning bright red. “It’s appalling.”
“For a long time, we lived like this, me covering my face and her hating me. Treating me like some abandoned animal she’d found. I spent five years in their cruel hands.” He chuckled, shaking his head letting it rest against one of the pillars that held that overhang up. “I prayed that at some point it would change, but it didn’t. She wanted nothing more than to leave me and that horrible clan behind, but she was trapped. Ogre children must be kept within clan walls till they turn five. So, she had no choice but to remain there with me until I was five years old. And then…”
He trailed off remembering the bitter cold of that winter. The clothes he’d been wrapped in, had barely kept off the daylight chill. The snow fell thickly, as his mother led him away from the Clan lands to the forest, how she’d been so kind to him offering him cup after cup of warm tea and warm rice balls. “We came to a cave, and I was drowsy. I remember her laying me down, and taking a seat beside me. She started making a fire, and there was a look of such happiness on her face. I closed my eyes that night thinking everything would be okay.” He stopped; his right hand tightened into a fist. “The next morning, she was gone.”
