2025-09-21: ... it's the sudden stop at the end
- Cutscene: ... it's the sudden stop at the end
- Cast: Tsubasa Seki's parents, Hanzou and Etsuko Seki
- Where: Throughout Greater Tokyo
- OOC Date: 2025-09-21
- IC Date: Saturday, July 14 2012
- Summary: Hanzou gives Etsuko no choice but to call the Joker Killer on her own beloved 'daughter'.
- Content Warning: Domestic violence, transphobia/misgendering, drug use, filicide, suicide, and a general extra note that this content is particularly heavy.
When Hanzou wakes, this morning, it's with an unsettled heart; a nightmare of that murder investigator who was clearly on the side of Officer Shimizu, investigating his attempts to elevate the family. Oh, Katsuya might have minded his manners to his face... but he can tell! He can tell!
Etsuko stirs, in his arms, glancing over her shoulder towards him. "Dear...?" She mumbles, sleepily, having heard his grumbling.
"Rrm," he replies.
Etsuko rubs at his arm, speaking with concern. "What's wrong?" (She's been keeping his foul mood at bay, the past few days, but there's little she can do if he wakes up angry.)
"... they offered me a promotion, a few days ago," Hanzou sighs, unlike the boasting he'd always done around his progression. He scarcely needs to add his, "but..."
Etsuko hums, to indicate her engagement, and doesn't interrupt him.
"It's that rotten Tsubaki!" He exclaims, and in the same breath tightens his grasp around her. "While she's causing trouble, the company's occupied with this idea I'll bring them bad press! And you know I've tried to reason with her -- there's no way she'll learn decorum, even if it's for her own good."
Etsuko clasps her hand to his arm, across her chest, as it creases her nightgown. "Surely they can't judge you for that?" She asks, a touch tremulous. "She's a child..."
"The public don't care for innocence or reason," Hanzou scowls. "They'll see her dressed like a clown, assaulting officers, and they'll blame the parents first. Your carelessness reflects back on me, too."
"I'm sorry," Etsuko says, now well and truly awake.
"It would have been better if she'd died back then," he growls, at the back of her neck, his temper as foul as she feared. He feels her stiffen, at his cruel words. "No," he denies her protests before they start, "don't play moral with me -- even the President said so! If she'd died, we could have spun a sympathetic story about her tragic madness. Tch, even if that officer had understandably shot her after she assaulted him, we could have blamed it on that damn Korean leading her astray..."
"Please," Etsuko cuts in, her voice small, as she looks down at the sheets. "Don't say such things... she's your daughter. My daughter! I -- I carried her for nine months, remember? Right in the belly you're holding now... I really went through hell!" Her own voice rises, as her voice breaks. Of course, Hanzou would never recognise himself as the devil, but neither can he get a word in right now. "My baby girl, it took four hours to birth her... they wanted to rip her out of my belly, I wouldn't let them! You were at work, you wouldn't know..."
"They briefed me when I arrived," Hanzou defends himself, and he didn't even let himself feel the pain in her voice. (A woman's hysterics, he thinks, inside himself.) "But you're quite right," his hand clutches at her belly, as if in echo, "she's your daughter. For God's sake, I didn't even want her... and now she stands to risk losing this family everything." He doesn't even give her time to swallow the bile in her throat, before he admonishes her: "Take some responsibility."
Etsuko shifts, but of course there's no getting out of bed, right now. "What are you saying?" She asks, and the fear in her voice is wrapped tight around his fingertips.
"If you don't silence Tsubaki, we'll all go down with her," Hanzou says. "And understand that I never told you such a thing, or I'll suffer for your inadequacy as a mother again. Is that what you want?"
"No," Etsuko says, her throat suddenly terribly dry; her shallow breathing comes so naturally, she doesn't realise it could possibly be the cause. "Please," she chokes out, a minute later. "I can't..."
Of course it's cruel to ask her to spill blood. Hanzou has, by now, at the end of a spreadsheet or an oblique conversation if not by his own hand; her wife has no involvement with his new calling, though, beyond looking lovely on his arm. (He did not consult her.)
So it's about time, he thinks, she start pulling her weight. She can stand to take a little initiative here, just the same.
"Figure it out," he grunts, as he finally releases her from his tight grip to roll off his side of the bed. "... I'm going to work."
"Oh," Etsuko moans, curling up in the blankets, and she can't even bring herself to interrupt her crying to wish him a good day. That's fine; it's hardly the first time he's gotten showered and dressed to a backdrop of her tears.
She is left, alone, in the fortress of their horrors. She looks to the plaster on the walls, and perhaps her eyes are blue from all her tears. She pulls herself up to sit on the side of the bed, opens the drawer, pulls out her bottle of pills. She tips it right over, onto her palm...
... only to sob, again, as a mere three pills roll out into her palm. "Oh," she sobs, to no one at all, "I've had no time to get to the pharmacy..."
She swallows what she has; she knows it won't be enough. As she buries her face in her hands and sobs, though, she soon feels the calming drag of the tranquilisers; she numbs, and she can breathe again, without her breath choking in her throat.
No, she thinks, now there is less of herself in her heart, she can't die. She'd leave poor Kiyoshi to his anger, then, leave aside what he would do to Tsubaki.
Every path before her is so
so
futile.
Of course she knows the rumours -- she doesn't need her children to share them with her. "I need to visit the pharmacy anyway," she tells herself, as if it were normal. "Get a few things for dinner..."
She takes the train, because Hanzou only keeps one car. She takes it all the way into Sumaru from Port Island, though she usually does; they used to live in the heart of Tokyo before Tsubaki's crimes exiled them, and she can't risk anyone recognising her when she's picking up her pills, which rules out both Shibuya and Paulownia. No one knows her in the Lotus Plaza, though; not even the staff, because Satomi Tadashi is a chain store, and so long as she keeps the sister running it nameless -- no one has much interest in her prescriptions.
Besides, she likes wearing the perfume Miss Kaori sells. It calms him down.
She visits the restroom, but with no one here, she doesn't bother stepping into a stall. No -- she just puts her bags on the basin countertop, looking into the reflection of a wretched woman.
"You're the one who married him," she says, to that woman, and behind her paralysed chest is a mountain of hate. Hate, and grim resignation, as she flips open her phone... puts her own number in.
One number, two, three. Down to the last, 4, 7, 1... and the line opens with a quiet click.
Etsuko draws in a breath, and drowns.
"My daughter," she tells her own phone, as her voice trembles: "Tsubaki Seki."
Click, the line closes.
It is fortunate -- though hardly planned -- that she is right by a sink, as she drops her phone and retches. There's little concern of it catching in the drain. She's eaten nothing since dinner. And she is no stranger to her stomach turning; she washes out her mouth, pops a square of crystallised ginger into her mouth from her bag, turns it to nothing over long moments as she collects herself.
She makes it home; she calls in to work. (Hanzou will be furious. She'll cope.) She puts her groceries away, and gets an early head start on the housework, while she's sitting outside of herself. Her hands put the dirty laundry into the washing machine, vacuum the carpet, return to the washing machine to escort the linen to the dryer. She takes some more pills, but just the usual two. The urge came and went.
And she sits on the side of her bed, and dials another number, into her phone.
"Tsubaki-chan?" Etsuko asks, her voice wobbling. "Oh, dear, it's lovely to hear your voice. I -- oh, no, everything's fine -- I just, really wanted to talk with you. ... oh, that's lovely. It's nice to make a new friend, isn't it...? Oh... oh, did you hear? Your father's due for a promotion, he just needs to... oh, don't worry about that, leave it to your mother." Beside her, her free hand curls to a fist, in the sheets. "It's just, it's not your fault, really, it's not... you know that I love you, right, sweetie? I love you s--so much," her voice hitches, in a sob. "My sweet baby girl -- n-no, baby, don't yell at me, please," her hand lifts, to grasp at her heart, tears welling in her eyes as the panic threatens to break through her pharmacological haze, "please, just, listen, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" And when her daughter brings up one of those reasons Hanzou condemned her so easily, Etsuko just shakes her head. "Oh... oh, don't go on about that right now, please... it's my fault, dear. I failed you as a mother..." And when she hears her own daughter's voice breaking, hers shatters, in turn -- "o-of course, I'm sorry, I'll let you go. I love you, sweetie. B--bye."
The bile tastes like ashes, in her mouth, and she finds in that moment she hates her daughter for not having the kindness to leave her one fond memory of her voice.
... but of course, she's angry with herself.
With no time for that, she puts dinner on.