The thought of losing Papa terrified me. It wasn't just fear—it was dread, as if his absence would dissolve everything I was. He had become my compass, my sun, the anchor of a world already half-sinking. I believed that if I just obeyed, if I stayed quiet and did everything he asked, he wouldn't leave. That was all I had.
So I did as he asked, even when it made me sick inside.
Mio was my friend. That was all. Her smile was warm, her voice cheerful, her presence something I had grown to rely on. But Papa had other plans. He spoke of us as if we were meant to be, and twisted my trust into a test of loyalty.
I can still remember the weight of his eyes on me that day. His camera lens, cold and unblinking, didn't just observe—it judged. Every movement, every breath, felt choreographed, not for desire, not for love, but for performance.
I wasn't trying to please Mio. I was trying to earn Papa's approval.
And when it was over, the sickness came. Not the kind you could cure with medicine. It was deeper. A nausea in my soul that made my limbs heavy and my heart retreat from the world. I stopped looking at my reflection. I didn't want to see the boy in the mirror.
When I finally broke, when I asked for it to stop, Papa only smiled.
"If Mio-chan's happy, then Papa's happy too," he said, brushing my hair back like he always did. "Don't you want to see me happy, Daichi?"
I didn't answer. What answer could I give?
His words were a trap. A soft-spoken prison. I had long learned that 'no' wasn't something Papa wanted to hear.
Mio was never part of the game. Not really. She had no idea what she was being pulled into. In Papa's grand plan, she and her mother were pieces too—roles in the fantasy he wanted to build. A family, he said. A new beginning.
I was to play the doting boy who loved Mio. Mio was the bright daughter of the woman he hoped to marry. Together, we'd complete the image he had constructed.
But I didn't love Mio that way. And Papa didn't care.
Even so, I clung to hope. That maybe, somehow, the nightmare would fade. That Papa would change. That if I endured just a little longer, things would go back to the way they were... when I believed his love was pure.
Instead, things grew darker. Until the night everything changed.
Mio had always been a symbol of light. She smiled on every TV screen, her presence soft and bright like a spring breeze. People called her the girl who could chase away clouds. But when I saw her that evening under the park's old streetlamp, she didn't look like sunshine anymore.
Her face was pale. Her hands trembled slightly as she approached me. And in her silence, I saw something I had never seen before in her—fear.
She didn't speak. She just reached out her hand.
And in it… was a pregnancy test.