Three solid knocks break the stillness of the air, and the peacefulness of my sleep.
*Knock knock knock*
“Auughhh…”
Shit, who’s looking to bother me this early in the morning in the dead middle of winter? Nothing’s even supposed to happen today, for crying out loud. I crack my eyes open and glance at the alarm clock to see what time it is so I can appropriately whine to whoever’s knocking-
11:37 A.M.
Dammit.
“Alright, sorry, just a sec!”
I instinctively return to bundling myself up in my sheets to escape the cold, but a pang of guilt overcomes me when I realize that I’m only making whoever’s at the door wait even longer for me. So I drag myself out of bed, slap on some clothes, not caring about how well they fit or how they look together, and open the door so as to greet my assailant. I feel like I already know who it is.
“Oh, hey there Hanako. Come on in.”
“Hello, Hisao.”
She gives a curt little nod and walks inside, closing the door behind her. Her expression is surprisingly nondescript, and I don’t think that she really has an excuse for it, since I am the one who was woken up only minutes ago. But I let it slide, as I’m certain she must have some reason for being here that takes priority over whatever expression she’s wearing.
“So… is there some reason you’re here, or did you just want to hang out or something?”
“I… I’m conflicted, Hisao, and I… want to know what you think.”
“Umm, alright? I guess I’m okay with talking. What about?”
Some lines describing the uneasiness in the room, how much I dislike when we’re uneasy, how it feels like an eternity waiting for her reply to come.
“I was thinking about… how we are together, you and I, and I was wondering…”
She takes a breather for a moment, then speaks calmly.
“Why me?”
The look on my face freezes at a point halfway between disbelief and disgust, and I immediately regret my words. I’m certain she knows how I feel when I see her self-esteem plummet like this, so for her to be so open about it, she must be really distressed.
She’s normally much more confident, much more outgoing. At least, more recently. Not just a couple of days ago I stood by the sidelines and watched her introduce herself to some prospective students that were touring to the school.
She even opened up and told them that the scars were from a house fire, and that she hopes to someday be an exemplar for showing others how traumatizing experiences don’t have to change us beyond the physical nature of things.
The students asked her why she doesn’t already consider herself one -with genuine honesty, which I thought was amazing- and she said that she still has some problems, just that they’re not very evident.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I mean, why did you… why did you decide to pursue this relationship? …If you were still just interested in treating me like a child, you could have… said no… and if you actually saw me as a… a love interest… what made me more attractive than the other girls here, who didn’t have the same problems I did? The other girls, who could handle themselves, and who could support you too?”
I find myself at a loss for words. I guess none of these are things that have come up since we became a couple, but I figured anything of the sort was long gone by now. I thought we were focusing on the future and what’s in store for us there, instead of living in the past.
And yet, her questions resonate with me, in a way.
I mean, what redeeming qualities did I have? For the longest time, I was only “the first guy to try and get to know her”. After all, there were a lot of times that I felt inferior to many of other students at the school, and I often felt that I had really lost out when I had that heart attack and spent four months in the hospital. I lost out on a “normal” relationship, I lost out on a “normal” life, I lost out on time, and I lost out on motivation.
To top it off, I’ve had my own doubts about how she’d even be able to forgive me for what I’ve done. From the way I’ve treated her for so long, as if she were a burden, to the things I did in pursuit of my own base desires. Did she see something in me that I didn’t see in myself?
But I don’t know if it would be appropriate to ask that of her. I might as well just be saying that I can’t justify why we’re together. If she’s as distressed as she is now, it might be a better choice to just reassure her of her own worth.
On the other hand, doing that might be like saying that I can’t rely on her to answer my questions. As if I don’t think that she can be the same way for me that I can be for her.
How should I go about this?
