The glass door of East Sector’s D Class School shattered as I slammed it into the wall. To hell with this school and to hell with the damage fees I was going to have to pay. I knew I was walking close, far too close to the edge of serious danger, but I couldn't seem to make myself care. If the world around me didn’t give a kuso about the crumbling wreck that was my life, then why should I?

I was still seething when I got home, still purposefully ignoring whatever heinous punishment I would have to face the next day.

I kicked the front door of our apartment open, just wanting to be alone, just wanting some space to try and sort out all of my clashing emotions.

“Home, sweet home,” I muttered under my breath, looking around the dingy living room, swelteringly hot and buzzing with flies. My gaze snagged on the frail, worn figure standing next to the window. Someone was home early from work, probably ordered by his supervisor to leave and give me a tongue-lashing. Pity I wasn’t in the mood to play the sweet and obedient daughter today.

“Daikana.”

My father’s voice wasn’t a question, or even a greeting. It was the weary, exasperated beginning of his half-hearted attempt to try and talk some sense into me. Hadn’t worked before, wouldn’t work now, but he kept going regardless.  

“I--received a few--forceful seijis from your school today.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I retorted, already tired of the unchanging quality this conversation had taken on after countless repetitions.

My father sighed, his exhaustion and etched wrinkles aging him beyond his years.

“You could--couldn’t you--at least make an effort to not attract all the wrong kind of attention? If you just behaved...mildly for a few weeks, they might stop watching you, stop finding fault in everything you do,” he said quietly, watching for my reaction.

Frustration clawed its way up my throat, despite my attempts to shove it into the pit of my stomach. Why did he still think this would help? What could more silence, more submission, more bowing to the yakuin and the cruelty of my teachers accomplish?

“I’m just--trying to protect you, Daikana. You could be arrested...Or worse.” His voice dwindled to a whisper on those last words, and I knew my father was remembering the countless families and faces that had disappeared over the years.

My father may have had good reasons to be worried, to try and stop me, but I was so damn fed up with playing by the rules of the system. I shoved away the quiet voice of reason in my head and retorted angrily, “Do you think I don’t know I’m in danger, that I can’t ever feel safe or welcomed in this wretched city? My entire life, I’ve been shoved around, slammed against walls, ridiculed, mocked, rejected, publicly humiliated for being half--”

I turned away suddenly, barely stopping myself before I uttered the filthy word people called foreigners like my father. I could sense him recoiling, shocked and hurt that I would even think of using that word after the decades of abuse, mockery, and discrimination he had faced.

I tried to calm my thoughts, keep my fool’s mouth from spitting words I didn’t mean, keep myself from becoming yet another name caller. In spite all of our fighting, all of our disagreements and debates, I still loved my father, and almost saying the foul label he suffered under crossed a line I hadn’t wanted to.

But I was so, so tired of having this ‘discussion’ over and over again, tired of his timid suggestions, tired of pretending that I would try to obey. I was done with putting on a show just to make him feel better. It was time to get to the bottom of this mess, and I convinced myself that I had to do it, even if I hurt the man who had raised me.

Turning back towards him, I held my father’s gaze, cold, icy steel in my eyes and words.

“You taught me to act in this way. You taught me to defend myself, both physically and verbally. You taught me to stand up for myself. Why the hell are you suddenly telling me to stop, to just be another tame victim? I’ve been acting this way to try and make a difference, to send a message to people like us that we don’t just have to lie down and be walked over!”

My words came closer and closer to a scream as I kept talking, tears beginning to run down my face.

“All my life, I’ve looked at the world we live in, where the rich gorge themselves by exploiting the poor, where the natives spit in the faces of the foreigners, and where there are countless families torn apart by this damned plague, and I’ve ached to do something, anything! When I told you how I felt, you encouraged me to speak up. You said that I should fight for people’s rights in any way that I could!”

I was sobbing now, my voice a hoarse yell.

“So I’m sorry if I followed the advice of my own father, I’m sorry if I tried to do what you told me to. I am so, so sorry that I actually acted on what I believed instead of collapsing under the weight of a few threats and suddenly abandoning everything I held to be true! I’m sorry I didn’t betray my own beliefs just so I could go and live as a self-pitying coward!”

I practically spat the last few sentences, my father looking like each word I spoke was ripping open deep, painful scars and letting them bleed.

I don’t care, I told myself. I. Don’t. Care.

“I’m sorry I’m not a two-faced, spineless liar,” I hissed. “But I guess I have you to be one for me.”