Life was bliss, like it always is at some point of time. It was August again and schools had closed. So Haruki was sitting at home playing games when the two strangest people walked into her room.
She knew she was coming, of course. She always did. Her eyes acted like they didn't know but she also knew why they came. And the things her grandmother had told them to make them come back. So when she finally saw her parents in flesh and blood, she smiled. Or at least tried to. Because she knew they didn't come back for her, but because her grandmother was tired of her.
Nevertheless, the reunited family of three had a good time in their new house. Haruki got to know her mother a bit more and they went boating behind the house on Wednesdays when the fishermen didn't step in. On some days, Haruki would wander outside the house on her own and stare out at the neighbouring estate.
It was a huge estate, with rolling green fields and at least five gardners spread around the area tending to the flowers and bushes. On the other end of the estate, she knew there was a private hospital. Yes, the one she was born in.
"Ichiyaka," Haru said one day as she and her mother were rowing the both together, one oar each.
"Yes?"
"Who lives in that estate? I see gardners there, but no one else."
"An old couple, I think. Sorry honey, I didn't really talk to the neighbours here."
"It's okay," Haruki said and they rowed quietly.
Later that day, at the dinner table, Ichiyaka got up to get some salt from the kitchen. "Dad," Haruki called.
"Mhmm?" Daichi replied, his mouth full with meat.
"Is there anyone living in that estate behind us?"
He swallowed his food cautiously. "Why? What did you see there?"
"Nothing, I just wanted to know if I could go play there."
"Alone?" Daichi asked with concern.
"Of course not," Haruki snorted, "With friends."
"No, Haru. You can't."
"Aww… why not?" She stabbed her fork on the meat sadly.
"I said, you can't! End of story. Eat your food properly, Haru."
Haruki frowned and looked up at her dad. "You don't have to shout at me, Daichi."
Daichi narrowed his eyes. "You do not call me that."
"Daichi," Haruki tried, with a mischievous look on her face.
"Haruki, stand up."
"Wha-" She sighed and pursed her lips. "Okay, I'll shut up. Sorry."
"I said stand up," Daichi insisted, his tone angry.
Haruki looked at her father in disbelief. Why was he doing this? She didn't stand up. There was no reason to. "You didn't tell me why I can't go to the estate. Give and take, dad."
Her father stood up instead and now pulled her ear and twisted it tight. Haruki screamed, trying to yank her father's hand away. Ichiyaka rushed in at the commotion and pushed Haruki's father away. "What are you doing?"
"Teaching that girl some respect! She thinks she can run her mouth like that to anyone?"
Haruki's face was red and she held her throbbing ear, trying not to cry. She wanted to say something, but it didn't come out coherently. She felt her vision go blurry with tears. "I just wanted to know why he won't let me go to the estate…"
"First you learn to address your parents properly."
"Are you guys even real parents?" Haruki yelled at him now, her hurt being replaced by anger. "You know what this feels like?" She pointed all around her, at the food, the shining kitchen and her pretty mom, "Like an ad. You know those ads where they fake a good looking family? Yeah that. So if you want me to actually call you 'dad,' then act like one."
"Haruki!" Ichiyaka slapped her arm lightly. "Don't say such stuff."
"Oh now I can't even be honest?!" she snapped and got up from her chair and stormed off to her room.
"Haruki Matsuo, come back here!" her dad called. "I'm not finished!"
"Let her be, Daichi," Ichiyaka tried to get him to calm down.
"Can you believe that girl?" he asked his wife. "Where did she learn to talk like that? After all we've done for her. Ichiayaka, you're too soft. We didn't raise her these past years, we can be strict with her now."
But Ichiyaka never agreed with that. Infact, she thought he sounded like an idiot. But she would tell him that only tomorrow morning, after his head had cooled down. "Let's just eat, I'll save some for Haru in the fridge."
The parents thought that was the end of the problem. The next morning would be a new day and everything would be back to normal. Or like Haru had put it, a shiny ad.
Haruki's room was on the first floor, the windows inside it facing the backyard. The moment she slammed the door, she flopped down on the bed and made a blanket and pillow fort around her for comfort. She breathed into the smell and tried to go to sleep and just forget whatever had happened.
But the sounds of her parents' laughter from the dining room stabbed her heart over and over again. It hurts… to hear someone else laugh when you're on one side with your heart in pieces. She knew it wasn't true, but it felt like they were laughing at her, how pathetic she was and how she couldn't fit into this 'family.'
"Did they not miss me at all?" Haruki wondered for the millionth time that since they came back. And whatever happened only kept making her believe more strongly that they had, indeed, not missed her. They were so engrossed in each other and in their stories of their times in the other country, that Haruki thought that if she just died right now, nobody would notice. There might not even be a funeral.
She heard the lights click off and the plates being washed. After half an hour more, she heard her parents' room door also close.
She got up and sat on the bed, feeling more awake than ever. She leaned forward and looked out of the window at the shining stars of a summer night and the full bright moon.
"Jokes on you, Daichi," she muttered to herself. "You didn't tell me why I can't go there, now I'm going to go find out for myself."
She turned back to her dresser and picked a cap before pulling on some socks because her shoes were kept in the front entrance. And a sneak out wouldn't be a sneak out if she just walked out of the door she normally walks out through.
Weirdly, her heart wasn't racing with the excitement of sneaking out like her friends in school had described it.
"I was so scared that my mom would wake up in the middle of the night and drag me back in, you know?"
"My brother, he is a light sleeper, and if he found out, he would make the biggest scene."
"I wish I could sneak out, but if I get caught, they will send me to an extra cram school."
But Haruki had nothing to lose. She had no siblings, and her parents didn't care. And she did well enough in school that cram school was a waste of time. She felt… happy as her socks touched the grass outside the house. She wiggled her toes and embraced the cool feeling of the wet grass before looking straight at the low wall dividing her backyard and this huge estate.
What she was about to do would technically be trespassing. She could go to juvenile prison for that. But those kinds of things seemed like unnecessary things right now. Her answers lay right past that low wall, and that night, she was going to find it.