Katawa Shoujo Forums

First of all I would like to say that i´m not a experienced writer and since my native tongue isn´t English so you may see lot of mistakes and crude langue. If you are willing to look past it and actually read it, I wrote a story of Hanako during her birthday in Hanako´s good route. I personally don´t know if this will story will do it any justice to real story but I hope you will enjoy it.

Birthday

I was sleeping. until I started to hear my mother´s voice. It was loud and panicking voice. The rain outside kept falling as she took me from my bed barely awake. She tucked me inside her pajamas all while I kept wondering what was happening. Then I heard terrifying sound. The sound of fire was all around house. I could not see any of while I was inside pajamas. Mother was running, running for her and my life. As she was running she started to hold me tighter against her. I could barely breathe. Fire started sound louder and was starting to feel quite close. I was starting to get really scared.

Then she kept me even tighter against her. I could not breathe. The sound of mother climbing stairs down was loud and it was starting to get hot . I started to struggle to be able to breathe, to tell her loosen up her grip on me. Soon after grip loosened. As I got to breathe again, I felt falling. Feeling of falling made me scream even if was just a moment. And what a terrifying moment it was. The moment ended with sound of mother crashing down on floor. I survived from the crash just being scared and crawled out of pajamas since mother was not moving. She was still. She had hit to floor on her side and started to lying on her back. She was bleeding. Her forehead was covered in blood. She was sleeping.
I was too shocked to even move at first but the smoke woke me up for it since it was hard to breathe. Sight of mother sleeping made me forget all of the fire. For few second I was still again, laying on a floor with my mother trying to breathe. I could breathe again. I started to try wake up her but still she was sleeping. I started crying in the middle of the flames that started to approach. I even tried to drag her but my strength was not enough. I was only a child. Finally the flames were starting to reach her. While I was still crying, I still started to desperately trying to drag her from the vicinity of the flames. I could not do it. I could not do anything as the flames reached her. I tried to wake her up by shaking her one last time. Then the flames reached me.

I did not notice the heat of the flame on my right shoulder until the fire had spread on my clothes. The pain I felt at that moment was horrifying. I felt it spreading as I started to run to the door that was just in front of the stairs. The pain made me forget everything else that was going on at that moment. I just focused running away from the flames from my mother. I was able to open the door but the fire had spread already on my arm and I even started to feel it in my face. The pain covered almost half of my body as I ran into to the rain. The rain would make it stop. Pain had to stop. Pain has to stop!!!

I woke up from my nightmare in middle of a night. I was on the verge of crying and it was hard to breathe. Finally I managed to calm down after living those painful moments yet again. I keep wondering why even if the answer is perfectly clear. I lost so much on that day. It has been years since the fire but memories are still clear. They are far too clear.

I woke up day after the fire. It was painful to just even be there. Then my memories of the fire hit me. I left my mother in the flames. I started crying and blaming myself. I couldn´t accept it back then. My mother was gone and few days of being in hospital I was told I was all alone. They kept silent about it until they had stabilized my condition. They didn´t tell me about my father though. I didn´t see him so I feared the worst. Finally I was told that I was alone in this world. It was hard to even think it. I did not have life to come back to after my condition allowed it.

"So this is my birthday," I whispered to myself.

The memories of that day seem to come back this day. After I got out from hospital I could not find my life that I left behind. I had changed. I tried to be same as before but I could not do it. My fear and quilt had transformed me. Not just physically but mentally. When I saw my 'friends' again, they saw me in a different way. That I was broken and pitiful child. They bullied me. They made fun of my scars and how shy and scared I was. Memories of them bullying me still hurt.

I started feeling desperate after bullying. I was alone. I wanted to blame something. I could not find anyone but myself. After all I was only one who survived that fire. I started despising myself. I started to question my effect on mother´s death. Did I cause the mother´s fall by struggling to breathe? I could not say for sure. I could have been smoke, fire, hurry or me. I still blamed myself for it. I wondered would my mother survived without me. The question has burned me for all my life and I am still dealing with it. I finally understood that I could not save her after the fall but perhaps I played a part in it.

Birthday always seemed to remind of this. I guess I attributed my own existence to my mother´s death. Every time I felt the pain of my scars and the loss of my parents I related my existence towards them. Thinking after it did not make that much sense. It was an accident. I guess it did not have to. I needed to blame myself simply to forget the fact that I was all alone. It was easier than just accepting it.

Now I´m not alone. I´m with Lilly and Hisao. They are my friends and I am happy that I can share my life with them. I started to feel happier about myself since they enjoyed my company and I could talk to them, hang out with and even fell in love with Hisao. The past does not seem to define me as much. I don´t feel sorry about my existence as much as before. I have been saying that I´m sorry for my own existence in the past but this time is different.

"Thanks mother and father," I whisper while going back to sleep.

Language issues notwithstanding, I think you did a good job here. (Out of curiosity, what is your native tongue?) The description of what happened in the fire doesn't quite seem to match up to what Hanako describes in the original, but it's still pretty affecting.
I do have to point out, though, that Hanako's problem with her birthday wasn't so much because of her parents' death, but because of the fact that birthdays were the only time people paid attention to her afterwards. As she says, "Every birthday was the same. Everyone doing their best to pretend that I mattered. Everyone pretending everything was all right... for that one day of the year. I didn't want to exist, but they wouldn't let me."
Don't think I'm being too hard on you, it's still a pretty affecting story, as I said. I liked the touch of Hanako being unwilling to realize her mother is dead, only referring to her as "sleeping." And I love the ending, particularly the last line.