/jp/ - Otaku Culture

After a (long) delay I am back. To recap: Hana Hakurei is the daughter of daughter or Reimu and her husband Anon. As the future protector of Gensokyo, Hana was never going to have a normal life, but it was worse then it whould have been. As she grew up, Hana was witness to how her mother abused her husband, physically, emotionally, and as she would later learn, sexually. Now a young woman of 16, she had moved into the village and convinced her father to move with her. Their new life away from the grasp of Reimu has begun.

As you grow older, you can look back on your life with a sense of clarity, shedding new light on the things that a child would simply ignore or find confusing. While I didn't start to understand the kind of woman my mother was until later into my child-hood, the signs were there earlier. I just didn't understand them until now. For the gaps I couldn't fill in, the people that were around then could give me details.

Even without my mother's behavior , I was never going to have a normal childhood. I wasn't the daughter of a farmer or a tailor, I was the daughter of the Hakurei shrine maiden, the daughter of the great Reimu. From my very birth I was expected to eventually to take her place. While I did go to the village school, do chores, and play like the other children, I also learned of the duties of a shrine maiden. My mother did take these teaching lessons seriously, and I learned a lot under her. My dad did his best to help as well, teaching me about cooking and maintenance work among some other things. He was just a regular man after all, with no powers of his own he had no chance to stand up to the youkai of this world, or as I would later find out, my mother.

I first started to realize how strange my home life was when I was about six. I was playing with some friends when some other kids approached. After joining in for a while, talk turned to our parents. I usually won the arguments about who had the coolest parent, but things were different that day. One of the newcomers looked at me and said “I heard from my parents that your mom beats up your dad, is it that true?” As a kid, you believe any almost rumor you hear so this was a personal attack on me. I denied it, stamping my feet and telling him it was wrong before leaving and heading home. I had to make sure it was a lie. As I approached the shrine, I saw my dad sweeping up the pathway. I ran up and told him what I heard and asked him if it was true. I remember how he fell silent and looked sad for a moment before responding. “Of course not, we love each other very much and she would never hurt me, don’t listen to such awful rumors. Now, why don’t you help me sweep up and I’ll make you something, okay?” I nodded, the news I heard almost completely forgotten, although it would remain in the back of my mind.

From then on I started to notice things a bit more. Sometimes my mother would come home late, blearily eyed, tired and cranky. She might eat a late dinner, mumbling to us before heading off to bed if she didn’t go right to sleep as soon as she got home. My dad said this was because she got tired from her duties chasing down bad youkai, and I believed him not knowing what alcohol was. Other times I would see dad with new bruises and sprains. He always had excuses for them. He tripped and fell, he wasn’t careful with some tools, he was out with my mom and a youkai hit him. I never thought there was more to it, I never wanted to think there was more to it, but I was always concerned for his safety. I now realize in those early years she was trying to hold herself back, as she wanted a stable life for me. Unfortunately it seemed she could never truly escape her awful behavior, and things would not be this good for long.