/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>43791204

Things were unpredictable after that. Mother did keep her promise to cool for after that for a while. Even is it seemed like she would get frustrated, she’d find some restraint within her and control herself. But after a while, she just seemed to forget. Maybe it was too much for her to keep herself in check always, or it was stress from her job, or maybe she just didn’t care. Regardless of why she did it, her anger creeped on back in our lives. The both of us did our best to avoid it, but we never quite knew what would set her off. A chore or a meal not done to her liking would usually make her irate, or her drinking would give her a hair trigger, sometimes she’d just come home in a bad mood if something went wrong on her trips to the village like not collecting enough money or having a trouble-making youkai slip through her fingers. Sometimes her anger would just flare up out of nowhere like when she thought one of us was disrespectful to her.


Most of the time she just shouted or twisted an arm or gave a smack across the face. Dad got the brunt of it, I suppose she thought he could handle it more, but sometimes if I wasn’t picking up fast enough on my training or if I acted up then she would get rather rough with my punishment. She’d yank me to the ground or make up some new chores for me to do. I was too delicate for her to really delver a punishment to, I suppose. Major flareups like the one she had after finding how the fairies trashed the shrine would still occasionally happen. We spent a few nights over at Marisa’s over the years. It was when I was ten years old that the next major downturn happened.

She had come drunk again. She stumbled inside and dad had quickly served her dinner and hid the sake. Mother sat down and the complaints started “This meal sucks, and it’s so cold. You don’t do much anyway, would it kill you to spend more time looking for the good rice and actually making the meal?” Dad bowed his head and apologized. He knew better then to argue. Regardless of how bad she thought it was, she still ate. “Where’s the sake? I feel like a drink” Dad edged away a bit, knowing what would happen. As I watched from around the corner, I saw her raise up from her sitting position and stumble over to him to smack him in the face. As he reeled from this, she pulled out her favorite tool of household discipline, the goehi. The first blow hit him the in side of the head, then a rain of blows followed on the rest of his body as he crumbled to the floor. His chest, his arms, his sides, his face. The rain of blows can fast and hard for someone that plastered. “Don’t fucking baby me, I know my limits, I know how to do my job. You don’t even have a real job! You can’t even help me run this place properly!” Trying his best to weather the storm, dad just admitted where he hid the sake, With a victorious grunt, she got up and retrieved it from the cabinet. “Don’t disturb me and clean up” As she started to head to her room, I ducked away to a side room to avoid her as she passed me by. When I heard her enter and a few moments had passed, I went to check up on dad. He was already getting up and checking on himself, wincing from the pain. We both knew what to do next.