Chapter Text
“She didn’t die because of me,” the child had cried to her father, after pointless arguments did not know that these would be her last words spoken, or else she would have chosen something much different (but she did not regret her words). Her father needed to know, he needed to learn. How could a death be a child’s fault?
Literally, your voice is the sound coming out of your mouth. Metaphorically, voice can also mean the way people express themselves. A sound produced through the throat, and out of the mouth, a resonance of the vocal cords that all people own. People have high voices, low voices, quiet voices, and loud voices — but the concept of voice goes well beyond people talking or singing. Some have a voice in their head, their mind, that only they can hear.
Real communication was difficult for the girl, but not using her voice was never an issue. Words were unnecessary to get her feelings out, and body language would speak just fine for the small girl when she could show it (she almost never did). She was only the age of five when she stopped using her voice altogether, enough time to learn the language but never enough time to perfect it. She refused to hold a conversation, to meet the eye of another for longer than a short period of time, to open her mouth or her mind to anyone that wasn’t herself.
However, there is, in fact, an ability to communicate within her. It’s not like she can’t, she can, but it’s more like she won’t. There is no reason any longer. No reason at all. Still, there is also an unwillingness to talk that lives alongside it. The unwillingness of speaking to another soul. To say a word. To say anything. The knowledge of the tongue consisted of a combination of several things: speaking itself and knowing how to communicate with those concepts. She may be able to write and use her features, but that does not mean she knows how to express herself. She never learned properly.
Writing was the only way she knew how to communicate at this point in her life. She kept a small spiral bound notebook in her side bag at all times but expected to almost never need to use it. Her pencil stayed tucked behind her ear, growing smaller and smaller with each use. Words to herself that she allowed nobody to see, her own eyes reading each line over and over again until it was ingrained in her mind.
Expressing oneself, at its core, means sharing a part of yourself. To share your inner life with someone else, or even a stranger, and connect with them on another level. You need not bury yourself deep down but dig it up and keep the dirt thrown about, so it is not easy to put it all back together. Buried six feet deep was herself and her tongue, put there by her own self will. She won’t dig herself out of her hole, even if it means her own death. Buried is where she remains.
Her headstone sits atop her grave, marking her life for all it was worth. Her mother’s grave sits beside her, resting peacefully, flowers strewn around, marking the positive effect she left on the earth. Her grave was barren. The stone was unbearably heavy.
Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, like a boulder was weighing down on her, and she couldn't push it off. Her mind felt weighed down by the pressure to use the tongue she was blessed with at birth (Speak girl, they would say, use your words like you were taught otherwise you’ll never be taken seriously) (As if she wanted to be taken seriously, or anything at all). Always carrying a silence followed by a gift of the voice is a choice because the voice one believes to be their own is not all theirs. Only when you accept it is when you indeed find a voice. But finding her own voice was not the issue; the soul knows her voice, and only she understands her soul.
There does exist a higher entity that bestows gifts on those below it. The voice, the body, and the soul live within each person; everything has just enough of a voice to speak of its own fundamental soul that only each unique person truly knows—hearing a voice only as noise defeats the whole purpose. There are waves, sound waves, that are unseen that make up a voice; a pattern of disturbance in the air by movement of energy coming from a person, passing through air, water, any liquid, any solid matter. Nevertheless, the soul behind it is the true purpose. Speech cannot be defined as just one part; several aspects decide who a person is and should become. That is the definition.
The girl has found her own definition and lives by her own terms.
She defines her own life, or does she?
Sometimes it is like her brain has stopped working. She could think, eat, read, and more, but when it came to speech? Well, she was speechless. Not a word would come out. Stupid, she called herself.
There were no communication barriers that precluded her inability to speak. Still, there was a wall set up somewhere in between. Not everyone listened to her (they had nothing to listen to, just her blank face staring back at them), and not everyone would accept her as she was, and she was okay with that. She chose to live her life like this, or so she believed.
Damage to her brain was nonexistent, she was a normal child, as normal as one could be. Her father ran study after study, subjected her to scans and tests to figure out what the hell could be wrong with her. There was nothing. From birth (despite everything else), she was an incredible girl; she had a high aptitude for her studies and learned quicker than the ones before her. She had great knowledge from reading every moment she had, and doing research on anything she could get her hands on. However, she was hesitant and could not meet eyes with anyone, lacking most forms of facial expressions to show her enthusiasm. She refused to speak when prompted and would cross her arms in defiance, often running away in the opposite direction. Some would conclude that there was a mental defect that went unnoticed throughout her short life, and they treated her as if this were true.
One would like to believe she has nothing to say because she is mute. That is quite the opposite. A girl has much on her mind and even more that she would like to say, to anyone, to everyone. But this urge had disappeared. The urge to speak to anyone. She wished she would speak, sometimes, just to release the pressure on her tongue.
Eventually, those around her would give on trying to pull her out of what was weighing her down. It was difficult for the girl to obtain close friendships and even harder to keep the ones that did stick around. She didn’t meet many to begin with, so losing the few that had only attempted for a short time didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. It did not matter to her.
Despite being constantly misunderstood and mistreated, she found solace in her own thoughts and the ability to be alone with her inner voice. Her world is filled with silence. She chose to be this way.
There are also two sides to a loss of vocalness.
The duality can be dated back to medieval times and the start of sound conceptualization. There are two parts of 'vox' or sound, the vox discrete and the vox confusa. The discreta symbolizes sounds that convey rational meaning, while the confusa signifies non-rational sounds. The difference is simple: human speech and writing versus non-human speech, such as animal noises and laughter. Not only animals are mute, but other creatures as well.
To be mute is to share the qualities of a rock, or a stone, in short.
The girl could express neither. The girl does not speak, she does not laugh, she does not cry, and she does not make even a tiny noise. People would call her foolish and dull for being unable to do the simple tasks humans can do. She believes it is by choice, but she has endured hardships she cannot open to.
She is a rock. Just a solid object sitting in the dirt with no movement, no breathing, and even no soul.
One could say that her mutism stemmed from trauma and the neglect of her personal needs. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father was given the burden of taking over as the head of their clan. He was a cold man who isolated himself from his feelings. Losing his wife only worsened this and severed the connection between his children and himself; he did not want this for himself and left the tasks to his late wife.
A broken heart had killed her father. That is what she believed. The man she had heard about (the loving, caring, doting, wonderful man) had died along side her other parent, with no trace of his past self to be found. Broken and dead like a child’s toy that had been left behind.
He left his few children to fend for themselves, which only severed the girl's connection with herself.
Her siblings did not feel the same. Her siblings blossomed into beautiful adults who flourished in their surroundings, creating meaningful relationships and powerful bonds. They had their parents. A loving mother, a careful father, to raise them and bring them up in this horrible world. They were much older than her and had much more time to be a real person.
She was no longer considered a sibling to them.
She was not as lucky as them.
The lack of comfort during her developmental years has raised some cause for concern (should have raised cause for concern if anyone had cared). If she did not speak during her early years, she would have no urge to speak any more than she does now. A newborn is dependent on their parents for they cannot do anything except scream and cry. For those creators who did not supply the bare minimum of requirements left a hole in their children, the girl had an empty feeling at the bottom of her heart as large as the earth. An endless black hole that sucked everything into it, bleeding and torn. She had no bandages to patch herself up and had no one to care for her wounds. She taught herself and she tended to her own needs. From birth, she was no child; she was an adult who needed to care for themselves.
This girl had no real childhood, no playful times, no laughter, or joyful memories to look back on and wish she was still in them.
Her life suffered one hardship after the other, and her mother's death was the beginning. Her father would walk past her in the halls and shrug her off with no greeting or a simple look at her. After years of chasing after him with her arms outstretched, eyes filled with tears, calling out for him, she gave up. The elder man would turn away as if she was a ghost and continue to wherever he had planned. There was no longer any point in trying any sort of unspoken communication with a man who was not accepting of it.
The lack of communication and luxury did not hinder her ability to become who she is now as a girl reaching young adulthood. At the young age of twelve, she had started to consider herself independent; taking care of herself, cooking, cleaning, and everything else that she would not have needed to do.
The Saito clan itself was not necessarily a very powerful one. They held unique, innate techniques but were only carried by a few every few decades. The stars. The sun. The constellations. Light. Purity. All held meaning near and dear to the Saito clan and she was raised on those morals; but that power was meant only for the purest of heart, so it was not surprising that it had passed her father and her grandparents, and even those before them; the family she knew of, was not a pure soul.
Unlike most clans that survived around them, this clan stands for a higher meaning and worships a higher entity. It was uncommon in Japan to worship just one entity, but they gave their souls to mainly the highest, the creator. The others followed behind.
Saito is a combination of words to mean 'serving the gods by purifying the body and soul' and 'wisteria flower.'
The family supplies and offers pieces of their soul to obtain the power bestowed upon them; the kamisama have worked in their favor for thousands of years. They have been worshipping and praying all their entire existence and are brought up in childhood to learn the ways of the kami. The girl was subject to this as well. Not one day went by where she did not kneel in front of the shrines scattered around their property for hours a day. That is how she was taught, and she would obey her family. Kneeling as low to the ground as she could put her body and placing her hands in front of her face in prayer, she would move her lips with no sound and hope that the gods would hear her speaking.
Purifying their soul meant cleansing themselves of their wrongdoings once a week (or as often as one could) in a blessed pool of water on the edge of the large homestead. Dipping themselves in the water and offering a prayer will wash off all the evil and tainted parts of their soul and reclaim the purity that lies within them.
Purity existed solely in the children without the need to rid themselves of it. When they come to a certain age, evil starts to exist and purification must begin. That is how they were raised for generations. To be pure, to be like an angel, to be one with the earth and the heavens.
There were chains of expectations in place from the moment a Saito child was born. They fulfill these expectations or suffer the consequences. The simplest of these requests is to repeat prayers daily to please the kami. The girl was unable to obey these orders and thus endured the aftermath. Her father was not a pleasant man. The kami did not mind, the girl could not have known for certain, but she believes there is no way they held any hate for a child who did not speak her prayers aloud, and only in her mind. They could surely read minds, could they not?
The existence of the wisteria flower also holds them bound to their familial meaning. The wisteria itself is a mystery to them. It twines around the columns along their property and into the cracks of each building, it trails along each edge of each fence, each stone, each brick, tearing its way into any opening it can find. It proclaims the arrival of the spring season with its colorful blooming flowers, which have an air of magnificence to them, the flowers being the most amazing beauty that was graced on their property.
One large wisteria tree sitting in the center of the Saito property stretches over 10,000 feet and is believed to be centuries old. The effect of the colors in the early spring is a magical feeling, and the humans graced by its beauty can't help but be entranced.
It could symbolize beauty and grace to the young girl, but she has come to hate (and resent so very much) the purple and white color of the tree. It means nothing to her no longer.
Rebirth holds a significant stake in the wisteria. It is a transformative experience, from a barren tangle of stems and roots into a blooming fairy jungle of purple and white flowers. The kami grant each member of the Saito family rebirth. When one dies, he does not indeed die. He will live on this plane of existence forever, whether that be the rebirth of another human or as something with no thoughts and no feelings. A human will exist forever in mind, as he is not genuinely dead; he only appears to die. The Saito family does not shed tears at a funeral but rejoices at the thought of existing forever in memory.
The girl does not wish this to be her fate. The girl wishes she would disintegrate into the ground and exist no more. She does not want to be etched into the memories of the people who have met her and does not want to be transformed into another being, something more beautiful to others but something uglier to her.
The wisteria flower transcends even death; it will die but always return. That is what it means to be born into the Saito clan. All existing moments will always be there in the past, present, and future, which haunts her the most.
It does not matter, however, for the girl had already died. Passed on to the next life, awaiting her next orders.
She was born with hair as brown as the branches on the wisteria tree and eyes as purple as the flowers. Her mother saw her for one moment and knew she would be blessed by the gods above them. And blessed she was. Her whole life revolves around the flower, which pisses her off to no extent.
Ironically, her mother named her Tomoko before taking her last breath, meaning a wise or clever child. For a child who could not speak any words, no one believed her to be wise.
“My little, wise, beautiful girl,” she called her, “you shall do great things.”
And great things she did not do.
Tomoko was the singular child of her time to be born with the unique techniques the family holds dear. It did not manifest at birth, but her mother knew immediately just from holding her in her arms (the last comfort she had felt). The father likes to deny this fact and refuses to believe that it could be his mute failure of a daughter. A failure who would achieve nothing, he constantly says, regardless of the power she was born with. A power that they truly knew nothing about. It had been centuries since this power had arisen, and its knowledge was close to zero. So truly powerful she would not become, her father knew that. A weak child could not be a master.
She was born with soft brown hair that curled at the edges and a blubbery round face just as every baby has. She didn’t cry and at first, her mother was worried if she was even alive, but she felt her tiny breathes against her chest when she held her for the first time.
Her eyes stood out; unlike her family with dark, crimson eyes, she was born with eyes as bright as a star, an explosion seated in the middle of the purple flower. They shined like a light and were the only redeeming quality she had. This color was unusual for the family, no one in their bloodline had been born with this, and it was not expected from any child in the future. That got their attention. The girl didn't enjoy standing out. The fact that she couldn't speak was enough, but having eyes like this was over the edge.
Her father showed her off at first, his “pride and joy”, but as she spoke less and less, that pride turned into hostility. The once beloved hold of a father turned into ice cold glares from meters away.
The kami treated her well. Unlike her relatives, they blessed her with gift after gift for staying true to her word and making prayer after prayer to them each day. They spoke only to her, and no one else, and her father resented her even more. The kami trusted the small girl with their highest powers and entrusted her with their will. She would acquire the power that they had wished to donate for millenniums.
The spoken word of the kami was not that, a word aloud, but in feelings and gestures, even then they were pretty nonexistent. The young girl did not actually hear anything from them, but she knew each time she kneeled before a shrine, that they were right beside her, listening intently, and conversing with her in their own way.
When Tomoko turned twelve, her father approached her with a marriage contract on her birthday. There was no warning in sight, and it came out of nowhere. At her age, it was not unheard of to marry off to a higher-ranked clan to raise their position in the jujutsu society.
She could do nothing but stand there in shock. At her age, she should be practicing her jujutsu with her close friends and not thinking about marriage, much less thinking about boys. (But of course, she had no friends, and nothing else to think about, so why is she surprised her father wants to get rid of her?). She just stared at her father with a blank expression.
He stands there, unmoving, unreachable, like a tower that will not topple over. He is the tallest of their family, being the only male in her immediate relatives, and right now, he seems like he stands as high as the heavens. He holds his head eye, with cold, dark eyes staring down at his daughter. With a slight cock of the girl’s head, he begins to speak.
"This has to happen, Tomoko; I can no longer care for you."
That is all her father can muster out, not meeting her eyes. Her father did not like or care for her in any way; he put all his effort into his older children, and it faded out by the time she was born. It did not matter the kind of power she was born with; he would not like her no matter what she did. But he did not know of the power she was born with. The gods told her and only her. She did not divulge that information with another soul and wouldn't dare even to write the words down for someone else to read. This power did not matter at this moment.
She is thankful in this moment that her father has never been able to meet her eyes, the eyes of the bastard child, the damned child who should not be living.
“You must say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. There is no other option.”
This was when he would put a heavy hand on her shoulder and look her in the eyes for the first time; he asks her to remember her manners and the pride in her clan that she has been taught growing up. This means the girl is not allowed to say no. She is a rock on the ground, stuck, immobile, with no place else to go. She is not allowed to voice a complaint, and definitely not to the head of the household, who expects too much of his children.
He did not even inform her of who she would be tied down to. Just a boy. Just a simple young boy. She would learn later that he was more than this, but that is all the girl stuck around to hear. The second she nodded her head meaning ‘yes’, she ducked out of the office and back to her only haven, her bedroom.
She knew nothing of this boy; sure, she knew of the other clans, but not enough to pay any attention to them; she done her light research, reading books, and studying on the jujutsu society. Their own clan was somewhat distant from the others; not doing much business, keeping to their own. Which in its own was part of the reason why the young girl hated this idea. It was why she knew her father did not love her the way she wanted him to; he almost hates the other clans, not wasting any time on voicing it after a long day of meeting with them. Each time was the same, ‘They think they’re so high and mighty holding all the power. Well, one day I’ll show them,´ and he would lift an angry fist and slam it on the table when he thought no one was watching.
The day did come when he would get on his knees for them and beg for their mercy. Please help, he would say, and help him they would. By taking his youngest daughter away, but not against his will, never against his will, but to settle the minds of another clan, to fill an empty role and her father had agreed with no hesitation. To give her away to a clan he hated so much must mean he hated her even more so.
But for now, because of her father’s weakness, he had no option to refuse but only the option to meet the boy she was going to be tethered to for life.
Her own weakness would not allow her to disapprove. Her own weakness allowed her to cave in, like she always did to her father. Weak. That is who she is. That is who she will ever be. She doesn’t believe any differently and her whole life will be centered around the weakness of her soul.