Trigger warning: domestic violence
Haruki walked into the little room he shared with his youngest cousin. The size of the room was smaller than the size of the kitchen in the house he lived with his parent.
They might have not been wealthy but they were very comfortable. He sighed as he dropped his bag on the floor. The cloth he wore from the hospital was brought over by his friend who spent the past three days with him in the hospital.
His friend's mother was a good cook, she was also very nice. His friend's father was also nice but when he remembers that the man allowed those gangsters into his room, it did not sit well with him.
It made him weary of the man. Every time the man came to see him, he imagined him coming with those gangsters and that was the only thing he disliked about being in the hospital.
The door of the room was pushed open and he raised his head to meet the gaze of his uncle, a short man with an unkept beard.
The man was an alcoholic who had no right to discipline anyone except himself with the fact that he was living with his aunt like her son doing nothing to contribute to the wellbeing of the family.
The man was not like this when Haruki's parents were alive. The man worked as an electrician and he lost his job around the time Haruki's parents died.
He took up another job but he was retrenched after a short while. He continued losing his jobs after getting new jobs for a while until he gave up and began staying at home all day.
"Uncle . . .," Haruki began but the words he planned to say were stopped with a slap that sent him to the cold hard floor.
He groaned as he raised his head to look at the man who bent and caught him by the collar of his shirt. Without asking a question, the man rained slaps across his cheeks. His head felt so hot and dizzy from getting hit that hard.
Tears poured down as he was not allowed to ask what he might have done wrong to deserve that. He could only press his lips together with his teeth clenched to avoid voicing out the pain he felt.
The man looked so furious as he continued to rain the beatings on his head. Haruki found himself finding hope in the fact that it was not his stomach that was getting hit. The man hitting his head will also feel the pain.
The man must have been drunk because he continued even when his hand was covered in the blood that escaped Haruki's busted lips.
"Argh! What are you doing?" a cry came from the door.
The ringing sound Haruki could only hear at the moment made the sound so muffled he tried to open his swollen eyes to look at who the cry came from.
He could see the figure of his aunt at the door. The bag she held fell to the floor with a thud. He groaned as he tried to stand up. he wanted so badly to tell her that he was fine but his head felt as though it had doubled in size so hot and uncomfortably heavy on his neck.
He swayed and fell. His uncle looked at his aunt for only a few seconds before reaching for the collar of his shirt and hitting him once again.
His aunt pulled him away as her screams filled the little room. He could not hear what she was saying but she continued as she pulled her husband away from him.
"Why are you hitting him?! Stop it!" Haruki heard her faintly as his uncle could not keep raining those painful hits on his head since she was struggling to stop him.
His uncle got so angry in his drunken state, that he flung his wife off with an angry shout. "Where has he been?" he heard his uncle ask his aunt as he turned away from him.
"Does that give you the right to hit him?" his aunt asked as she tried to stand up from the floor.
"Yes, if he went out to sell his body, I have every right to stop him from doing that even if I have to kill him," his uncle shouted back his response as he turned to look at Haruki.
"I . . . I did not . . . I did not sell my body," Haruki begged as he saw his uncle advance with his intention written boldly on his face.
"With that pretty boy face of yours? How many of your type go around selling your bodies?" his uncle asked. His aunt wrapped her hands around her husband's waist and tried to pull him away. "Do you support him? Is that where you get the money to take care of him better than your sons?"
"I did not sell my body, I swear," Haruki cried out as loud as he could when he noticed his uncle moved his attention to his wife. He was scared that his aunt will get hurt because of him. The man was drunk and completely out of his mind, there was nothing he could not expect from him.
"He was dying in the hospital. I called you to tell you to visit him but you told me you could not," his aunt tried to explain when his uncle's attention moved back to him.
His uncle paused and glanced between the two of them before walking out of the room. His aunt rushed up to him. "Are you okay?" his aunt asked as she reached to touch him but stopped when she saw the state of his face.
"Yes, I am okay. This is the first time this is happening," he said hoping he sounded persuasive enough to her.
"I heard you were beaten when you got to the hospital," his aunt said as she helped him up to the bed.
"No, I wasn't. It was for a ruptured appendix. I am fine now," he told her with a smile that looked very crooked with his face swollen.
"Don't smile, it must hurt," she said. "Let's go to the hospital. You have to get them treated or your beautiful face will be covered in scars."