🌈 niji + his dad + abuse and how that plays into his mental health / how he seeks comfort in fighting because of his dad / how he feels guilt for fighting his dad but that whole-ass relationship isn't Strong. pre-warning this contains mention of domestic abuse / alcoholism (briefly). i would like to say that physical and mental abuse is does tend to be somewhat common in japan as well. anyways lets get into it.
shuuzou’s dad is an alcoholic. he started drinking in college and hasn’t stopped until he was admitted to the hospital for a rare form of cancer. he worked in a respectable job , punching numbers into a computer , and he would come home , and take his frustrations out on his wife and shuuzou. the twins ( shuuji / suzume ) were born when shuuzou was five. shuuzou, who couldn’t do anything to help his mother -- decided that he would try to take care of the twins. he’d help his mother out with them when she couldn’t or just try to keep them quiet when their father was in a mood so they wouldn’t get in trouble. eventually, this lead shuuzou down a dark path himself. of trying to be the best elder son he can be but not being good enough which lead to physical fights between him and his dad as he got older. the first time he got in a fight outside of the house , he went to his mother and cried, wondering if he was becoming like his father. he kept getting into fights because it felt good to win for once , and again , and again. shuuzou saw how this took his father’s eyes away from the twins and onto him , placing him as the ‘disappointment’ of the family , and he didn’t care as long as his father’s anger didn’t turn onto the twins. he kept getting into more and more trouble - via stealing a motorcycle , breaking into buildings , etc., whatever he could do. this eventually came to the fatal blow between him and his dad - where he punched his dad after getting into a fight with him , and knocking him down to the ground and out. shuuzou stared at his father’s body , and he felt nothing. his mother screamed and shuuzou was confused at why. why would she be upset when the monster that haunted them was gone ? an ambulance was called , and his father was admitted to the hospital where it was found that he had a very rare form of brain cancer. due to being inside of the hospital / things seemed fine. his father, no longer allowed to drink, glossed over the abuse that happened , and his mother was happy to pretend that they were a picture perfect family. shuuzou dealt with the guilt of putting his father into the hospital - and by dealt i mean ignored - and decided that he had to be the one to support his family now that his father couldn’t. there were some decent times in shuuzou’s childhood with him and his father - where shuuzou would cry , and his father would tell him that it’s okay to be lost sometimes / and those are the memories that shuuzou remembers. he remembers him and his father fighting / doesn’t talk about it much. this does not mean that just because a person drinks means that they are violent / and a violent person does not have to drink to be violent. it does sometimes make things worse / but an abuser is still an abuser , with or without alcohol. moving on. this leads shuuzou down a path later in life where fighting is a comfort to him. this is why when he’s stressed / or whatever / he goes and tries to start a fight. his mother had once tried to combat this by getting him into karate, and it helped, but it didn’t. all it did was help him in his street fights. basically, because he doesn’t know how to seek out comfort without violence, this drives him to seek comfort in violence. this directly ties into his self-worth because he wasn’t good enough for his father to not abuse / wasn’t able to perfectly protect his mother / wasn’t able to protect the twins entirely / wasn’t able to protect himself. his mother would rather pretend it didn’t happen and he loves her so he lets her. still he has thoughts about why he wasn’t good enough for her to stick up for him and the twins. she prefers the twins over shuuzou because shuu is the one whose anger burns the brightest and while suzume has her own anger issues - they only come out when her own is threatened.
