Her hair was untied, leaving the ones she had on at the top of a drawer in front of a mirror. For some reason, she hadn’t turned on any of the mps, the only lightsource being the deep blue night sky.

  Closing the door behind me, I asked her why she knocked me out.

  “I already told mom we’re not coming back home.”The manner in which she so matter-of-factly answered, with a smirk on her face, made me take a moment to understand if I heard her correct.

  “She freaked out so badly, you should have heard it. I’ve never been insulted that much before in a 60 second timeframe.”

  A self-satisfied sigh left her lips. As she sat down on the king sized bed draped with tacky red sheets just to the left of the entrance, she began unbuttoning her uniform.

  “An insane bitch… Well, she’s not wrong. Though, she’d be better off saying those words to a mirror.”

  I can understand being a bit hysterical when being dropped with that bombshell. She must have been worried sick all day with us disappearing. I would have assumed a car crash had happened given I was in her shoes.

  “... Don’t kid yourself, dad. She utterly despises me.” She continued with a more serious, yet somewhat despirited tone. As she threw away her school uniform toward the desk, revealing that she only wore a bra below. “ If I ran off by myself she wouldn’t have cared. In fact, she wants me gone. But not you, that’s the issue.”

  “Riyu… she just has a bit of an issue with how to show affection.” I answered, “She can be a bit too strict at times, yes.”“You haven’t seen her when you’re not there with me. In fact, come here for a second.”

  She gestured to me to sit next to her. I was a bit skeptical of her intentions, keeping my guard up while approaching what was supposed to be my side of the bed.

  “I love how you still listen to me, despite looking pretty angry.”

  As if anyone would be able to stay level headed.

  “Anyways… here.” She pulled out her phone from her bra. “Take a look at this.”

  She pressed py as she handed her phone to me. The video began with her sitting in the dark of her room, being a lot younger than she is now. Her phone situation on the top of her bookshelf. She nervously gnces around as the light from the hallway enters below her door.

  “Oh, by the way, you may not remember but this was around christmas when you fell asleep when you came back home.”

  About 3 years ago, if I recall correctly.

  Suddenly, Riyu opened the door. The younger Eiri seemed to shiver upon seeing her, but it was hard to tell with the bad lighting.

  “You.”

  With her arms crossed, that’s the only thing she said.

  Eiri looked away.“I told you so many times. Get the fuck away from him. Don’t touch him. Over and over. Every day. Every single day!”She picked up the bunny plushie I bought for her a few months prior to this video, and threw it at Eiri, who got hit in the face before she could defend herself.

  “I’m sorry!”“It’s all because of you that he’s always te. Don’t you get it already? He doesn’t want to deal with you. What are you gonna do if he leaves because of your constant whining, huh?! Ever thought about that, you stupid brat?! ”

  The woman before me in the video was nothing like my wife, or at least, who I thought my wife was. Riyu was never this harsh or loud, even on her worst days.

  “Always apologizing, always being sorry, isn’t going to fix anything. Do you have any idea how bad of a mother you made me look?”

  All this time, she hid a side like that. It was a lot to take in.

  “I’ll show you how it feels like to be sorry.” Riyu gred at Eiri, before pulling something out of her pocket.

  “Oh, you don’t want to see what comes next.” She said, grabbing the phone before I could properly see, and pausing it just after a shrill scream came through the speakers. “Though, it was my mistake not to tell you sooner.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  I would have helped without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I couldn’t. Not there, or in the car. She’d know.”

  I thought back to all the times she asked me to drive off. Perhaps that was her way of signalling for help, and I missed it.

  “She won’t be able to find us now though. I figured it out… how she was always able to tell what we talked about.”“...The traffic stop?”

  The moment she chloroformed me, at the red lights. Was it there?”

  “I still have no clue what she exactly did. But when the lights all turned red, the radio turned on.”

  “She bugged the radio?!”

  “If that wasn’t the case, she’d have found us.”Still, despite the expnations, a lot of it felt… unresolved. I still had a lot of questions, and she deliberately wasn’t giving answers.

  “What’s your end goal?” I asked straight to her face.

  “We run, as far as we have to, until we find happiness.” She leaned back on the bed. “We forget this life we had. Bury it. School, work, waking up on time, holidays, family trips, let it all go fuck itself.”

  She closed her eyes and thought.

  “We’ll go boating on the rivers, visit different cities, find a new, quiet apartment, go on road trips. Something like that would be nice.”