2025-08-19: Just Tell One Person
- Cutscene: Just Tell One Person
- Cast: Yua Ooshiro, Fuyu Ooshiro
- Where: Aoba - Penthouse
- OOC Date: 2025-08-19
- IC Date: Thursday, June 28 2012
- Summary: Yua gets a call from her father, while she's cooking dinner, and she shares the good news with Miho about him... though she ends up telling him more about why she went right back into the closet, too. He encourages her to approach her dreams with a little more realism.
- Content warning: Discussion of sexual abuse
Yua's in the middle of stirring a pot, humming cheerfully to herself as she sips at the stew on her spoon and adds some more spices. She's at the point in the early evening after she's locked up her studio and come back up to the penthouse, but before Miho gets home from her hard work at the office; time she uses, of course, to cook dinner.
(Well. She laid down briefly, first, to help empty her brain out of all the stimulus she had to cope with over the day. ... she does get terribly tired.)
She's cheerful now, though, as she works on the beef stew she promised she'd try her hand at making. It's deceptively simple, but there's really a lot going into it -- even as she finally adds that last dash of spices and decides it's ready to simmer.
As if by the hand of fate itself, the phone she keeps on the counter rings just as she's turning the heat down. It isn't Miho's ringtone, so she can't be ringing to say she'll be late again, at least... when Yua accepts the call and lifts it to her ear, she says, "Hello, this is Yua..?"
"Yua-chan," she hears her father's voice, at the other end. "How are you?"
"Dad!" Yua chirps, warmly, as she grabs her Kitchen Chair and pulls it up to perch on. (Sometimes she needs a chair, at the end of the day, to sit down while she's cutting vegetables.) "Great timing, I just put dinner on low heat. I'm making beef stew for Mimi tonight!"
"That's great," and she can hear the smile, in his voice. "I spoke to your mother earlier today, too... she and Yuken-kun are doing fine."
"Let's go and see them soon, okay?" Yua asks, leaning an elbow on the kitchen counter as she folds one leg over the other. "Oh! And did you hear Yume-chan won an award at school?! For her English class!"
"She did?! That's great! And yeah, I'd like that," Fuyu says, his voice warm. "But come on! How's my big girl?!"
"Daaad," Yua whines, though it's good-natured. "Actually... eheeheehee, actually..." She swings her leg, merrily, as she says: "She said yes!!!"
"What?! Why didn't you lead with that!" Her father exclaims, excitedly. "That's great, sweetie! You must be so excited!"
"Eeeee!!" Yua makes a sound not unlike the teakettle she's looking at, wriggling in her chair.
"Have you talked to Takashi-san about it, yet?" Fuyu asks, when her happy noises subside. "Well, in your situation..."
"I know," Yua sighs, her joy pressed upon by society. "Mimi's talking to him, dad. Since I even asked... if we could just declare we were wed, you know?"
"I know that's been tough for you," he replies, thoughtfully. "That kind of... you call it coming out, right..? Yua-chan, let me ask you something."
"Yeah, dad?" Yua asks, straightening in her chair a little.
He pauses, a moment. "Before you think about telling everyone you're Miho-chan's wife... have you told anyone new how you're dating, yet?"
"Mm... I mean, no, but..." Yua frowns, fiddling with the executed head of a carrot. "No," she sighs, a moment later. "It's been way too scary..."
"Because of... that woman, right?" Her father ventures, delicately. "You mentioned, the psychologist, ah... well, I don't think you said her name, but..."
"Natari," Yua cuts in, her voice hushed, as her torso rocks forward and back in her chair. "Natari Konishi. She had the most dreadful, invasive questions... a sick way of looking at me..."
"You don't need to talk about it if you don't want to," Fuyu assures her, his concern audible.
"Okay," Yua says, still deathly quiet, still rocking. (And quite ashen, though that's hardly audible.) "Then, I'll just... just say, she... made it clear she wanted to... know what it was like. With -- with me. All while saying it was this, sick fetish, abnormal, deviance--!" Grief and anger stab through her voice, as her shoulders tighten.
"Yua-chan, sweetie, you're okay," her father tries to soothe her, though his frustration at being on the other end of a phone is audible, too. "You thought... if you were married, people wouldn't use those words any more, right?"
"Mm," Yua hums, focusing on her movement instead of making sense of the jumble of emotions in her head enough to place them to words.
Hearing her shutting down, Fuyu doesn't immediately ask another question. Instead, he starts crooning an old fishing tune, a familiar, predictable melody. It's when Yua starts joining in that he can guess she's starting to unfold from her little ball; he keeps going, a while longer.
Until -- "I'm 'kay," Yua manages to place words for speaking, too.
"That's great, sweetie," Fuyu says, with the relief of a man who fell in love with that sort of wife and had to learn how to help his children without much support at all.
"Wanna talk about it more," Yua manages. "Like you said."
"Okay," her father replies, with just a shred of hesitation. "Let's see... did you think if you got married, everyone would recognise your legitimacy?"
"Mmhm," Yua hums. "L-like. It's not weird."
"Sweetie..." Fuyu starts, still hesitant. "I see where you're coming from, but... it's important to be realistic, too. You're defying rules and norms..."
"They're stupid rules!" Yua exclaims, her free hand flapping violently against her chest.
"They are stupid," Fuyu agrees. "The mainland's very stupid about these things. But they're rules which Japanese people follow. I'm worried if you'll be okay living honestly... when you might be judged a lot."
"But, if we say we're married..." Yua whines.
Fuyu pauses, a moment. "Some people won't believe you, Yua-chan, even if you prove it. Maybe one day Japan will recognise bians, and you can get officially married, but... I think it will be hard before this society accepts that."
"Then... what do I do, dad?" Yua asks, her shoulders sinking.
"Maybe... try telling one person," Fuyu ventures, in unknown territory. "Just see how you go with one new person knowing. You can tell them how serious you are, and see how you can deal with being seen like that."
"Just one person...?" Yua wonders.
"If you want to, you can tell another," Fuyu encourages her, mindful not to box her in with instructions. "But just try, Yua-chan. Break goals up into little steps, remember? Like cooking."
"Like cooking... oh!" Yua exclaims, straightening up. "Dinner! I should get everything else ready!"
"All right," her father chuckles, a little glad to feel some of the tension leak from the call. "How about I let you go, I mean, let you get back to cooking?"
"That sounds good," Yua says. "But... I'm really glad you called."
"I'm always glad to hear from my big girl," his smile is audible, across the line. "And I really am happy for you. I know you've wanted this for a long time."
"Like, super forever the longest!" Yua agrees.
"Yup, that long," Fuyu says. "I'll talk to you later, sweetie."
"Bye, dad," Yua says, hopping off of her chair. "Love you."
Fuyu echoes, "Love you too, Yua-chan.", and the call clicks closed.
Yua checks on the pot, staring into it for a moment, despite the heat of the steam.
"Just tell one person..."