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The chair is too big for him, and Ren notices that before he notices anything else in the room. The size of it, the way the cushions dip slightly under his weight, the way his shoes fail to press flat against the carpet —A reminder that he is thirteen. That this space was built for children who cry easily, who curl into themselves, who need somewhere soft to collapse. But he wasn't like that. He never was. Not like he's ever allowed to do so.
His feet hover just slightly above the carpet. He could let them swing if he wanted to. Back and forth. Something his age would try doing, but he kept them still. He stopped being a kid a long, long time ago.
The clock ticks steadily on the wall, its rhythm slow and patient, as if it has all the time in the world to wait for him to break. He would've heard the therapist by now. Was she late? That's a rare sight. He shifted on his seat, eyes scanning the room. The air smells faintly of lavender, the same thing he always smells. Everything here is designed to lower his defenses.
Not long after, he heard the door open and close right behind him, and footsteps made themselves known before his therapist sat at her usual spot in front of him.
“Hi, Ren. Sorry, I was late.” The therapist smiles at him with the same careful warmth they’ve worn in the last two sessions. It never slips too far into pity.
He nods once in acknowledgment. She introduced herself again, even though this was their third session. Her name, her role, and the purpose of the meeting as if that would’ve given him some comfort. And it was as if he were about to forget such basic information. He never forgets.
He remembers the degrees on the wall very clearly. The exact shade of ink she uses in her pen, the way her eyebrows lift slightly when she is surprised. He remembers the coffee stain on the corner of her notebook from last week.
“How have you been feeling this week?”
It has always been the same question. How was he feeling? Three sessions in, and he could barely grasp the words to explain what this “feeling” is. He shifts his gaze toward the painting behind them — a beach scene, except the waves aren’t clean or precise. The brushstrokes are uneven, thick in some places, and almost careless in others. The horizon line tilts slightly to the left, as if the artist’s hand slipped and never corrected it. The foam blurs into the sky, colors bleeding into each other without permission. It looks rushed.
It irritates him more than it should.
If someone was going to paint something meant to represent calm, shouldn’t it at least be controlled? The ocean looks unstable. Unmeasured. Like it couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to hold. He doesn’t understand why people call messy things expressive. It just shows the artist’s laziness and inability to make something perfect, and they were being praised for it. If the waves are crashing, then define the edges. If the sky is pastel, then keep it within its boundary.
He finds himself mentally correcting it, straightening the horizon, sharpening the foam, and cleaning the lines so the water and sky stop invading each other. It doesn’t look peaceful. And for some reason, that bothers him more than perfection ever could.
“Fine,” he answers. The pen begins to move immediately, scratching softly against paper. He imagines the word written in neat, professional handwriting.
The therapist allows silence to stretch between them. Ren recognizes the tactic now. Silence unsettles most people. It coaxes them into filling the emptiness with words they didn’t plan to say. He doesn’t feel the urge.
“Fine, how?” the therapist asks gently.
He considers giving her something inaccurate just to see what would happen. A fabricated confession. A dramatic statement. Would her pen move faster? Would her tone shift?
Instead, he catalogues himself the way he would list items on a shelf.
His breathing is steady, his heart rate is normal, and his appetite is still functional, even though he barely consumes anything nowadays; his sleep schedule is a mess, but still manageable. Tears? None. He hasn’t cried in a while. As long as he remembers.
“Normal,” he adds.
The pen hesitates before continuing. He wonders what definition of normal she is applying to him. Is there a scale somewhere? A grief chart with stages labeled neatly in bold letters? Week one: denial. Week two: anger. Week three: depression.
What week is he on?
“Your siblings have been expressing their emotions more visibly,” the therapist says carefully. “Ryuuki seems lost, and Ume is often restless.”
He’s aware. He hears what happens in their house every night. The walls weren’t thick enough to hide their grief. Ryuuki walks the hallway at exactly 2:17 am every night, always looking for Ume. And Ume always had to hide her feelings to reassure their little brother. Grief has been a frequent guest in their house now, and he does not entertain it.
“Do you miss your parents?” The question is delivered softly, but it lands heavier than the others.
He tilts his head slightly, genuinely curious. He never really thought about that. His mom, though she tried her best, is more focused on his other siblings than on him. Not that he can ever blame her. He looks just like his father. He wonders if his mother truly saw him as her son or just another face of her husband that chose to haunt her.
“What does missing someone feel like?” he asks in return.
The therapist blinks once. A quick flicker. It was gone in the blink of an eye, but he noticed it.
“It feels like wanting them back. Feeling their absence,” she explained.
They are absent. That much is true. Even if to say that they were present in his life when they were still alive, they acted like they weren’t. His mother barely looked at him. And his father treated him more like a business partner rather than a son, well, except in his dying moments. Still, that doesn’t answer the question of missing them when he barely felt their presence.
“But what does it feel like?” he presses quietly.
The therapist shifts, crossing one leg over the other. She looked like she was debating what words to use. Even that is hard for someone in her profession, huh? “It can feel like an ache in your chest, sadness, or longing.”
He searches himself with clinical precision. He finds hunger, present at moments where his stomach is greedy for something to consume, fatigue, and irritation when people whisper too loudly around him. That ache was nowhere to be found. There was an empty feeling inside him, but he could not rule that in as “ache” because, if he could not feel it, how would he label it as such?
“I don’t feel that,” he says honestly. Lying just wouldn’t save him from more questions. No matter what he picked, there will always be upcoming questions to satisfy one’s curiosity.
“That’s okay,” the therapist replies after a brief pause. “Sometimes when something overwhelming happens, children disconnect emotionally to protect themselves.”
“From what?”
“From pain.”
He studies her expression carefully. He finds that reason ridiculous. He knew what pain looked like. Looked. Because even he himself cannot explain what that is, though he knew that being in pain means complaining non-stop about where that ache is. “If I’m not in pain,” he says slowly, “What am I protecting myself from?”
Her smile tightens just slightly. She was recalibrating.
“Sometimes the body feels things before the mind recognizes them,” she says. “It can take time.”
“If it comes later,” he asks, “does that mean it’s waiting?”
The therapist hesitates before answering. “Possibly.”
Waiting inside him… Like a delayed reaction that hasn’t triggered yet. He isn’t sure if that idea is comforting or threatening.
“Do you ever feel angry, Ren?”
He does. He thinks about the shouting that used to fill the house. The sharp edge in his father’s voice, the way his mother would look at him afterward, silent apologies flickering behind tired eyes. He thinks about the times his father would pin all the blame on him and make him do ridiculous tasks a kid his age shouldn’t have been doing. He thinks about how his chest feels heavy each time, and a dangerous thought that always lingers through each feeling, until it stops when he finally sees his father looking at him in fear.
He remembers thinking, very distinctly,
“Yes,” he answers.
“And what do you do with that anger?”
He folds his hands tighter in his lap. “What would you prefer I do with it?”
The pen stops completely this time. “I’m not looking for a preferred answer.”
What a lie. If she wasn’t looking for a specific answer, then what was this session for? She’s here to collect things. To pick apart his mind and find the things she wanted to see. “But you are measuring something,” he says calmly. “So there must be one.”
Her shoulders stiffen. Subtle, but real.
“Ren,” she said carefully, as if she were afraid of offending him. “Do you ever worry about hurting someone?”
There it is. The question beneath all the others. What a question to ask someone his age, huh? He looks at his hands. He remembers clearly how he gripped that knife. His hands were steady.
“Everyone thinks about it,” he says quietly. He had hurt someone. “The difference is who admits it.”
The clock ticks on, filling the silence that follows.
“You’re very articulate,” the therapist says finally
He hears the unspoken phrase attached to it. For your age. She didn’t have to say it for him not realise that. He knew damn well. Maybe that is why his mother barely spoke to him. His mannerisms were just like his father’s, no matter how much he tried to be in denial about it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. “Is that bad?”
“No. It’s just unusual.”
Unusual. Not normal. He heard it multiple times, too. That he is… abnormal for his age. He feels a faint flicker of awareness. She is trying to decide what he is: a grieving child. Emotionally numb, or a potential risk.
“If I don’t react the way you expect,” he asks softly, “does that make me sick?” The word hangs between them. Ume called him that, and he didn’t feel anything for it. Disagreeing would just be a hassle, and he didn’t care if people would label him as such. For him, he is normal, and other people’s opinions of him become irrelevant.
The therapist studies him for a long moment before answering.
“I don’t think you’re sick,” she says carefully. “I think you’re complicated.”
The session winds down after that. Lighter questions follow — school, routines, daily life. He answers each one efficiently, offering nothing extra. Like a robot only giving out the answers the person wanted to hear.
When she asks about the night again, he tells them the truth.
“I felt calm,” he says.
“Calm?” she repeated.
“Yes. Because someone had to be.”
He remembers just looking at Ume while she calls 911 in a panic, with Ryuuki clinging to her, confused, yet scared. He just stood beside the body, unable to say anything. He would be lying if he said that it would be okay. Why would they believe someone covered by their own father’s blood? Besides, he knew it was never okay.
He wonders if something inside him is supposed to shatter eventually. If grief is building somewhere deep in his chest. And if it never does, if calm is all he ever feels when everything falls apart… then maybe the therapist is wrong.
Maybe he isn’t that complicated. He just was, because there's no answer to this yet.