Chapter Text
Mogami Kyoko was quiet for a six year old.
Instead of running around and crying for her mother’s attention, she sat quietly and did everything she was told with barely a pout or a semblance of a tantrum. Most people would say that she was raised well and would clearly grow up to be an upstanding and productive adult.
Mogami Saena did not.
As the woman who gave birth to Kyoko, she knew better than anyone what that child could become. She bore witness to her development from an infant to a toddler with a wide smile and sweet airy voice, who always demanded to be picked up with grasping fingers. The first few years were exhausting, but everything was so normal and within expectations that she didn’t notice anything amiss. And then the child began to talk.
By the age of three, Kyoko was capable of full and simple comprehensible sentences but she was a very quiet child. Saena hardly noticed it since she usually left the girl with a neighbor, the Fuwas, who had a child of their own but had the room for another. The oddness of the child’s behavior only became noticeable when she started to approach her to show off her grades in class.
Saena prided herself in being a rational person - even if she had failed to live up to that at the worst time possible - but she could not help the way she reacted to that child. Her stomach would turn when she noticed a small form peeking from behind a corner, singular golden, amber eyes glinting with intention and deliberation. Her brow would furrow severely as she attempted to dispel the memory those eyes sparked, the deceit that they were capable of, but she couldn’t stop herself from smacking away the hands once reached for her seeking nothing more than her love.
Logically, she knew the child wasn’t planning anything beyond earning her praise, but her heart still squeezed when she saw that round face (so like his ) go blank with thought before a smile appeared, hopeful and contrived. Logically, she knew this smile was a product of her inept rearing - her inability to smile at her child, to hold her beyond what was necessary, to praise rather than judge her accomplishments - but the thought that half her genes came from him made her question the child’s nature.
Why is she smiling? Does she want something from me?
Of course she does, she’s a child and you are her main caretaker.
But why does she keep coming back after I’ve pushed her away, again and again?
She needs you, she wants affection just like anyone else. She doesn't know what else to do.
Even a child must be able to tell that I don’t want her! Why won’t she stop?! Can't she tell that one day I won’t be able to hold back anymore!
Of course not. Because she is simply a child, her child, no matter how much Saena evaded thinking about it, lingered in her workplace under Todoh’s understanding eyes.
She struggled for six years before she realized what the best decision she could ever make for her child - and herself was.
At the age of thirty-four, Mogami Saena abandoned her child to the too-generous care of her neighbors, the Fuwas. She explained little to them, but they understood that she was no longer capable of raising her little girl without leading to dangerous consequences for the both of them. She walked away from her daughter with nary a glance back, knowing she might just make the mistake of turning back and ruining both of their lives. Her child would be better fit raised by people capable of looking at her without the weight of paranoia distorting every word and act that came after.
When Mogami Kyoko was six years old, her mother left her crying on her knees, wondering what she had done wrong all her life to never be loved by her only family.
Twelve years later, a young woman with a beautiful mask-like smile and singular honey-amber eyes takes to the stage and Saena can only watch from where her heart can no longer be twisted and deformed.