my father’s daughter.
I’m tired.
I asked my father about my older sister, Hana. I don’t remember her at all, given the fact that we parted ways when I was only a year old. She was a geisha, though, and apparently a pretty well liked one. She was famous in Kugane for being pretty and charming, for being good at her job. Dad says that everyone who met Hana loved her.
They were able to keep in touch, up until the sennight that she died. It was safe, considering that she was in Kugane. They got to have a relationship. Dad knows Hana like the back of his hand, and I am... happy. I’m happy that he got to have a life-long relationship with one of his children, at least, and that Hana wasn’t like Connor. According to him, Hana looked almost exactly like our mother - which means we probably looked similar, too - and that she had our mother’s light, too. Kind to the core, a ray of sunshine, a smile and a laugh that infected...
And I’m happy that she was good, and I’m sad that I didn’t meet her, but I’m also scared. Is that selfish? I’m scared of not being anything like her. I’m scared of the darkness that follows me like a raincloud. I’m afraid of our dad seeing the anger and the pain and the brokenness that I carry and wishing it was Hana instead of me that survived. Messed up, right? Isn’t it? Or is that fear valid?
Hana, by all accounts, was talented, and beautiful, and beloved. Did she ever get so angry that she couldn’t see straight? Was she ever inclined to self destruct just to feel something that she was in control of? I hope not. I hope she was nothing like me. I hope she lived a life full of joy and not hardships. But kami help me...
I am afraid of being the last of the Matsuda children. Connor was garbage, Hana was light. Maybe I can settle for being in between the two, but I’m worried that maybe I don’t have that middle ground, either. I’m scared that there’s something in me that looks like Connor - or Itsuki, I guess, was his real name.
Yuna might have been good. She only lived until she was five, until Audrey took over. And I’m scared that Audrey won’t be anything like her father’s daughters.
