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Eri's Choice; [Eri Charinko - Single Post]
Topic Started: Dec 30 2013, 06:14 AM (225 Views)
The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
This post takes place after Feet in the Water but at least a day prior to First Responders.

---

Eri Charinko slammed the briefcase shut, and stood beside the bed in the apartment she and her husband had bought in Tokyo after Kyo had sent them away. She stood there, and closed her eyes. Her fingers were trembling atop the leather case. She was aware, painfully aware, that the fingers of her left hand were bare, devoid of jewelry. The ring, her wedding ring, currently rested in its old, rarely-used box at the bottom of this very briefcase--because she wasn't a part of this household anymore. Wasn't... part of...

No, no no no, she still had family. Mother, father, daughter. Even if Akio--even if Akio had forced this on her. Forced her hand, as she'd feared. Now there was no going back...

She remembered every word of the conversation as clearly as if an audio recording were playing out in her ear at that very minute. She had returned home mere hours ago, and after a stiff, uncomfortable dinner with a man she had been getting less and less comfortable around by the day for weeks, she had told Akio in that serious-business way that only men and women in romantic relationships ever seemed to adopt:

"Honey... we need to talk."

And so she had stood in the apartment kitchen, waiting for Akio to put his plate in the sink, and when he'd turned toward her, he'd immediately asked, "It's about that daughter of yours, isn't it? What has she gotten into this time? Or did she come crying to you for college money? No. No! If she was so eager to throw everything away on vices, she'll have to live with the--"

"It's not about college money, Akio. But it is about Kyo-chan. And also... about me."

Eri leaned on the briefcase harder as she recalled this part of the conversation, and sucked in a steadying breath. This part, maybe, hurt most of all. She had held up a hand, and called upon Dia magic. Her fingers had glown luminous with faint blue light. Akio had stared, stared with dawning horror, and Eri had said simply, "While I was in Nagashima, the golden butterfly came for me. Akio, I'm a Persona-user now, like our dau--"

"Eri, put your hand out! Put it down! Put that--stuff away! The window is open!"

Akio had reached past the sink and roughly tugged Eri's hand down. His grip was tight and not at all gentle. This was a foreign thing to Eri, who had only ever known gentle and delicate contact from Akio except during--certain activities that had become less and less frequent over the years.

"Akio, no one will be able to see from across the road."

"It doesn't matter! If anyone witnesses--that!--it could go badly for us, Eri! Keep it hidden! Don't ever use--"

"Akio, I'm going back to Nagashima. I want to help our daughter."

A long, pregnant pause had followed those words. And then: "No."

"N-No? Akio, every day she's risking her life down there protecting everyone, and--"

"It's her life, let her throw it away however she pleases! You are not going anywhere, Eri, you aren't, especially not back to that hellhole of a city, I won't let you--you're going to stay right here, and you're going to pretend those powers don't exist, and at this point, I'm still in favor of disowning that girl--who does she think she is, sending us away as if we were the children?"

"You went along with it!"

"How am I supposed to lay down the law when your daughter can shoot ice from her fingers? She isn't our problem anymore. I am done trying to salvage that girl. If she wants to make her own way so badly, let her, let her and let her regret pushing us away when she's living in a slum apartment struggling with the rent every month because she has no college education and worked up such a reputation for whoring around that no respectable employer will ever--"

"She's your daughter, too!"

"She's no daughter of mine, and that's that. All she ever causes is worry and frustration--"

"Our daughter is a hero, Akio--"

"Your daughter is a self-absorbed delinquent, and you are not going to Nagashima. Do the dishes, Eri, I have work to--"

And then, as her husband turned away to walk back into the second bedroom he'd converted into a study, Eri held a finger out toward Akio's face and conjured a tiny orb of Gry, a flickering, spherical distortion inches away from the man's jaw. Akio froze, eyes wide. Eri recalled the feeling of her own face, twisted in rage and sadness, as she uttered the closing words of the argument.

"My daughter," she had said evenly, emphasizing every syllable, "is the only family I have, and I am not abandoning her, do you hear me?"

Akio had spluttered something about her mother and father and him, but Eri had simply dispelled the Gry magic, and stomped past her husband, sharply snapping that she had been adopted to begin with. In all her years as Akio Charinko's wife, she had often imagined that secret being shared, but not like this, never like this. It was supposed to have been an intimate confidence, not a... spitefully-imparted denial of everything they claimed to be to her.

But Kyo, Kyo was kin, Kyo was blood, Kyo was the fruit of her womb, a part of her. Nothing her adopted parents or her husband could claim to be would ever take precedence over Kyo. Nothing, ever...

And so that night Eri packed her things, and stuffed them in the trunk of their car. She told Akio on the way out that she would bring the car back in three days, once she was all settled in Nagashima. After that, it and this apartment were all his, and he could stay there, alone. If he dared disown her daughter, then he disowned her.

That was all there was to it.
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