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nikkeisimmer · 7 months ago

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Title: The Chikamori Legacy (Rebooted) - Prologue

Title: The Chikamori Legacy (Rebooted) Author: Nikkei_Simmer E-mail: [email protected] Rating: M Classification: Haruo/River Spoilers: The Sims 3 Summary: DISCLAIMER: All EA premade characters are the property of Electronic Arts and their subsidiary Maxis. All of the player-created characters are the creation of the author and their usage is subject to author’s permission being granted. No profit is being made from this story, nor is any infringement intended. Author’s Note:

As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults. – Alice Little

Prologue

Summerhill Court Park

He had to get away; the feeling of being trapped in a situation not of his own making mocked his every move. There was no support from the constant taunts of his mother who was smart enough to not lay a finger on him. He was nineteen, old enough that he was able to find some way in life other than to continue to live under his parents roof and have to tolerate the constant berating inflicted on him by his mother. “Why can’t you be intelligent like your Uncle Hidekazu? At least when he studied he got marks that were tops in the province. Every-one’s going to think you’re an idiot. Are you mentally retarded that you can’t figure out those questions?” It was a constant refrain from the time he was old enough to understand that schoolwork was important yet the fact remained that he didn’t feel like he was able to understand what it was that he was being taught. It didn’t sink in the first time, nor the second...nor any of the subsequent times that the same instruction was levied against his comprehension. It was as if there was a disconnect somewhere. And combine that with an inability to explain oneself and the situation he found himself in didn’t help matters any either. So he was summarily lumped in and assessed as stupid and doesn’t want to try. “Do you even realize just how hard your father had to work in order to make enough to get you your piano lessons and your math tutor? The least you could do is try!”

He was trying...trying hard...yet failing. It seemed as though five hours of study as expected by him on a nightly basis was just an exercise in beating his head against the wall.

I can’t help that my brain doesn’t work like other people’s. You keep insisting that I’m smart but I’m not compared to other people. You keep insisting that I’m lazy, but I’m not. I just don’t see the reasoning behind continuing to bang my head against a wall trying to learn something that it’s going to be nearly impossible for me to understand…when I could be doing the same amount of work doing something I like doing.

For most of Haruo’s childhood, it was subtle putdowns and comparisons. Then when he’d turned 13, the verbal abuse ramped up. And the contradictions. He was expected to excel in his schoolwork, yet he was subtly told that he was stupid and any time he got 100% on his exams which was a rare event, he was told not to get too big for his britches. So it was this constant up-down confusion that was driven into him and the lack of emotional security was the main reason why he lived in a constant state of stress and fear. And after a while that sort of thing wears on a person.

The toughest part of school was making friends. Because then those friends wanted to invite you to birthday parties and get-togethers and Mom didn’t like wasting money; so no parties for him. Mom didn’t like anything as far as he knew, least of all him. All she ever did was nag at him, “Did you do your homework? Did you get 100% on your test?” If you didn’t, you were a worthless piece of microscopic dung, not even worth dusting and throwing out, who wouldn’t amount to anything worthwhile. Evidently she resented him for something, he didn’t know what. But it seemed as though she was dedicated to making his existence a living hell. He was constantly told that if he couldn’t get the same grades as his uncle (his mother’s older maternal brother) that he would be destined to live out his life as a drudge; to live out his life in fear of starvation or worse. There were two ways to deal with that kind of abuse and both involved a matter of defiance.

The first involved utilizing it as motivation to give her a “fuck you” by proving her wrong and excelling!

The second involved shutting down, proving her right and in essence saying “well if you’re going to think I’m useless, might as well prove you right…so fuck you too!”

The first was fine and dandy if his mother had underestimated his skills and the educational institution and medical fields had not turned a blind eye to any neurological education deficits. Then he could utilize those aptitudes and soar.

But if by chance the parent had over-estimated the son’s grasp of his skills and turned a blind eye to his neurological deficits then the latter would rear its ugly head and the son would give up trying because he knew that no matter how hard he tried, the barriers were too high to overcome with just his abilities alone.

And it was into the latter category that Haruo fell into. As smart as he had appeared in his elementary school classes, going into high-school had been a cold-shower awakening as to his inadequacies in curricular study. There was a nagging feeling of not being able to measure up whenever he was tossed a new mathematical/algebraic concept or a chemistry or physics concept. And try as he might, he was just not able to grasp the concepts. They unfailingly eluded him no matter what study techniques he attempted to use. And being met with recrimination every single time one failed a test because the concepts were too difficult to grasp started to eat away at him.

If he was going to get yelled at as hard as he’d tried to understand the concepts then might as well say “fuck it” and not do the work.

And it took three times as long for him to understand the idea behind what was being taught to him. And then being told that he wasn’t catching on quickly enough or that his uncle would have understood it just like that, was not motivation. In fact to Haruo’s way of thinking it was a great de-motivator and a good enough reason to give his mother a subtle “fuck you”.

Time was of the essence in learning new concepts and the school curriculum was not tailored to helping those who were slow. Regardless of what was said, the school system didn’t like having to deal with those who were slow and made sure they knew it.

Those who couldn’t hack the curriculum were shunted off to classes monikered “the Retards” or “Special Ed” or even worse; the “Shortbus Crowd”. Political Correctness was not a hallmark of the 80s nor was it in the decade that preceded it.

Luckily for Haruo’s mental sanity, he had a bulwark against the never-ending pressure his mother inflicted on him.

His beloved friend, River…she was very much a tomboy; a fun-loving girl who enjoyed rough-housing with the other kids and taking long walks in the woods talking about stuff. In elementary school her choice at recess was to play war with the rest of the boys rather than sit with the other girls and play with dolls. So she’d end up covered in dust from head to toe with the rest of the boys.

She was also not your generically pretty type of girl. Her facial features were angular with a strong jawline. And her mother kept her hair short in a pageboy cut until recently so that she could keep it organized without it ending up in a mess but now she wore it long and wavy and she’d actually started to use make-up though as a teen-ager, she like to overstate her looks a bit – for teens, there was no less is more. She was good-natured and empathetic and always willing to lend a helping hand. With other kids at school, making fun of her for her nose which seemed a bit too large for her face; it was her only sore point that would get her riled up enough to start a fight which from being tough as nails and from playing with the boys at school; she would win every fight she started and well, the ones she didn’t start either. She was no wilting wallflower. You didn’t mess with a McIrish. Her younger sister, Maegyn, on the other hand was often seen on the arm of Parker Langerak. Parker had always fancied River, but River wouldn’t give him the time of day so Parker went with Maegyn and it appeared as though they were happy together. River was more interested in the son of the Asian couple across the street which for all intents and purposes was Haruo, though he had absolutely no clue – River was the girl that he hung out with on weekends and lunch hour and recess when they had that sort of thing back in elementary school.

River’s crowning feature was her brown hair which if the light hit it right gleamed a bright golden-red. And Haruo was glad that she was his friend. She was the one rock he could lean on. And it seemed as if fate was destined to keep them together as she was his friend from elementary onwards and the years had brought them even closer.

River’s mom was a kindly, single lady who was trying to raise River and Maegyn on her own after her husband decided to bail on the marriage. River missed her dad, even though he hadn’t been owning up to his responsibilities. Her mother tried her best but it was hard being a single mother and trying to earn a living enough to support her two daughters so it was nice that her daughter’s daycare nanny had put her with getting the financing for Asilomar without the expectation of being paid back. Besides Grandma Yumiko loved River like she loved her own grandson and would be livid if Mayumi mistreated River in any way shape or form. The years had been tough on Fiona with the lines of stress showing on her features. But she’d carried her burden with quiet dignity.

Yasunobu was someone who wanted to work with his hands so he became a gardener. He was trying to get his cooking skills high enough to cook for the family since his wife was absolutely useless in the kitchen. Having grown up in Japan during the Second World War, he was of the opinion that life, if not lived, was wasted. He’d had to raise his own brothers and sister when they were young. His father had passed away when he was just six years old. Humping bags of rice and sugar over the mountains during the war years just so that he could support his mother and her children. There was a sense of duty and responsibility to his family no matter how unpleasant the task. He had been dealt a lovely smelling pile of garbage when having to deal with his harridan of a wife. But he bore it with the patience of someone who had seen way too much hardship in his life. All he wanted was for his son to grow up responsible and understanding of the fact that no matter what adversity came down the turnpike that he would handle it with dignity and silence; just as he had.

Mayumi (nee Miyagawa) Chikamori was a different kettle of foul-smelling fish. She loved nothing more than to make others miserable. As a school-teacher, she had that ability and she wielded it like a finely honed weapon. She would give detentions out to everyone if they even asked her why she did something that seemed the slightest bit unfair to then. In her classroom it was her way or the highway. And frankly she preferred it that way, no backtalk, no insolence, in fact, the kids were lucky if they were even allowed to breathe.

What she hated was the parent-teacher inevitable confrontations. As she felt she was superior to anyone she felt she shouldn’t have to answer to anyone, even to a school district supervisor. She loathed them. Who did that two-bit paper-pushing bureaucrat think he was talking to? After all, Mayumi was a straight A academic whiz who could think and argue circles around anyone. In fact in her understanding, the whole world revolved around her. So why shouldn’t she get the benefit of being adored by everybody?

And this was poor Haruo’s lot in existence. He would never be able to exceed or even meet Mayumi’s expectations; so why even bother.

Haruo’s maternal grandfather, Torakazu Miyagawa had landed in Los Angeles, CA, USA in 1907 and made his way up the coast to settle in Vancouver, BC; his wife Yumiko came over in 1908. They had 4 children, one stillborn and three live-births through the late 20s and early 30s. When the war came to British Columbia in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the U.S., the Miyagawas were sent to an internment camp in Slocan where they were housed for a while, then shipped off to a sugar beet plantation in Iron Springs in Alberta. What possessions they had were auctioned off by the government of British Columbia and they never saw a single cent back.

Everything they had post-war had to be built up from the ground up. From sheer pennilessness to a decent standard of living. At the age of 58, with all their possessions that he’d worked for gone, Miyagawa Torakazu, Japanese naming protocol, last name first, given names after; had to gambatte and put his nose to the grindstone to build up his family’s fortune from nothing yet again. Torakazu wanted nothing more than to have his children apply themselves to their studies and to have a better life than what he’d had; to make his sacrifices to make a home in Canada worth something.

Were they not Canadian? And not Japs. They’d professed their loyalty to King George VI and country and not to Hirohito but no one had wanted the slanty-eyed Japs in Canada to aid in the war effort against Imperial Japan. After all, a Jap is a Jap and nothing more.

After all he’d endured in the internment camp, Torakazu had wanted nothing to do with the hakujin woman and child his wife took into her care. But for all the suffering that Yumiko had underwent in Slocan and Iron Springs, her heart hadn’t grown hard and intolerant like her husband’s.

Yumiko loved the little girl who she babysat with all her heart and she fawned over River as much as she had done with her own grandson. She smiled seeing the two toddlers together as they grew up together, reaching their teen years, which with good fortune she had been able to see, unlike her husband who had passed away when Haruo was eight years old, seeing just how close they were (they always seemed to gravitate towards each other) and often wondered if the two of them would find each other (in the romantic sense) eventually, they were one soul according to what the Buddhists referred to.

Grandma Yumiko prayed for such a union between the two. Despite Torakazu’s snort of derision for even coming up with such a thought, Yumiko had held out hope.

If fate wished such a union, it would happen. All she could do was guide them to become the adults they would be in the future. Wasn’t there a song in the 70s that said exactly this: Love Will Find A Way?

Grandma Yumiko was a romantic. After Grandfather’s death, Grandma Yumiko had come to live with her daughter and son-in-law who’d had a closer relationship with his mother-in-law than most do. However his wife, Yumiko’s daugher was not happy about that either. But it was the Asian family’s way of doing things. One looked after one’s elders in old age if one was a Nisei.

The Miyagawas nor the Chikamoris were not a very demonstrative family in terms of displays of affection. What their form of affection was…was in the toil and care they took to preserve the stability of their family and to keep their family unit intact, making sacrifices to make sure that their progeny got ahead.

It was very clear to Yumiko that Mayumi, her daughter, had no maternal love for her son whatsoever. All Haruo meant to Mayumi was what he could do to keep Mayumi reigning exalted, what adulations could be showered upon her.- the only reason for producing Haruo was to produce progeny for the sake of fulfilling the dream of her father to see his grandchildren before he’d passed away. So Haruo was just an obligation and not worth emotionally taking care of. As long as the bare minimum of his necessities were taken care of…the Ministry of Social Services (as they were known back then) wouldn’t interfere. Which was why Yumiko had stepped in - she had decided unilaterally that she would provide the emotional support Haruo needed from someone within his family.

The Nisei (second generation) learned from the Issei (first generation - the immigrants): shikata ga nai; deru kugi wa utareru - a fatalistic view of the inevitability of trials and tribulations in life.

It was the Sansei (third generation) in fact that tended to be more outgoing and emotional in public. The ones who made the Yonsei (fourth generation) feel at home.

Haruo was the product of a Issei and a Nisei. His father was an immigrant. Technically that should have made him a Sansei but his mother kept calling him a Nisei-han (2nd Generation and a half) as if he was mathematically torn between two generations and not a part of one or the other and even more so, not a part of the Nikkei Sansei cohort. Not able to express individuality or emotion without recrimination and labouring under the expected constraints of the Generation before him.

Because according to Mayumi’s Generational-mathematics: if two Second Generations could produce a Third Generation then obviously a First Generation Immigrant combined with a second Generation was technically producing just a half generation - (the mathematical gymnastics escapes me).

It had been eleven years since Grandfather had died, a man hardened and embittered by war and internment, knowing only that he’d not been treated as a Canadian should be, he’d always been thought of as an interloping foreigner - the Vancouver Anti-Oriental riots of 1907 which he’d just barely avoided cemented his view on one single point: Never trust a hakujin - it had given him pause and seriously consider returning to Japan, but he opted to stick it out. His wife had loved him, she’d come over to Canada, sight unseen, landing in Vancouver in 1908. and stood by him as they’d worked their way through life, building back again from zero, side by side through joys and losses, easing each other’s pain and a part of her left with him to the other side when he passed on beyond the veil.

Once Torakazu had passed away, Yumiko established herself as a fixture in little community of Maple Ridge helping in the Rotary Club and other community events which helped keep her away from her daughter who threw everything up in the face of her mother that her father never did anything for her, meaning Mayumi, even though they were doing their best during the 40s to try to remain afloat and forget the fact that her father had busted his ass to try to earn everything back that they’d had before everything was taken away from them by WWII and their interment in Iron Springs, Alberta, could not care less about her mother and father's sacrifices. There were some days that he would go out and not come back until late in the evening because he was out there cutting lawns and doing landscaping. And when they had uprooted from Maple Ridge and moved to Sunset Valley, Yumiko again turned her sights towards helping the community through community groups and other activities to assist the less fortunate. But for Mayumi, that wasn’t enough, it was her needs that were most important, her needs that needed fulfilling over anything else.

And Haruo’d had an established friendship circle in his former town of Maple Ridge. But he’d ended up leaving them behind thanks to Mayumi deciding to uproot him for the last three years of his high-school and he’d ended up being moved to Sunset Valley Secondary School. And that meant starting all over again if it wasn’t for River who’d moved from Maple Ridge to Sunset Valley along with her mom after her dad had disappeared from her life at the age of 6. They had been each other’s constants. That was the main reason why he hadn’t decided to become insular and focused on his own self – they’d buoyed each other’s moods over the course of the years.

This was the 80s and most schools had a majority of Canadian students with a European heritage. There was maybe one or two, perhaps at the most three or four Asians in the classroom out of a majority of Caucasian students and Bebe was of mixed descent being both Caucasian on her father’s side and Black on her mother’s side. In Haruo’s case his Asian schoolmate was his cousin Torao who was an year younger than him who was in the same class as River and perhaps the other two who were his maternal cousins which he hardly ever talked to. As long as his parents weren’t talking to them, he wasn’t talking to them either.

If you don’t like it; there’s the door. It was his mother’s favorite ultimatum. She used it anytime he had any objections to being treated badly and he had never taken her up on the offer. Where would he go? How would he survive? Where would he get food? He was underage back then when she started using that threat when he was 13 years old. And if he had left, it wouldn’t be but a few days whereupon he would end up getting picked up by someone with nefarious plans for his future, namely dumping him in a shallow grave in the middle of the forest. This was the time that predators like Clifford Olsen roamed the British Columbia roads looking for easy pickings. People had gone missing and were never seen or heard from again.

And Haruo didn’t want to become one of those statistics, so he put up with what Mayumi was putting him through, but he was reaching his absolute limit of what he was going to tolerate. The threat to leave the house used to terrify an elementary school child, but not any longer. Now that Haruo had graduated from high-school, he was certainly not afraid of just packing his stuff and leaving home. The only question now was where was he going to stay?

His closest friend was still living with her mom, but he wouldn’t want to bunk there. There were too many people in too small of a place. The thing was that he didn’t want to be near anyone; if they got too close they had the capacity to hurt him and he was done being hurt. He was tired of being the punching bag for Mayumi when she got her nose bent out of shape for something he may have done unknowingly that pissed her off for some little-known reason. Oh, no, and she wasn’t going to articulate that reason. Her view was that the useless little turd knew exactly what he’d done to get under her skin and it was his job to guess what it was. Haruo was tired of playing guessing games and had taken enough of her shit that she dished out on what seemed to be a daily basis

But he was now out of school, graduating with what appeared to be the lowest passing grade that one could receive out of the British Columbia school system and in the history of Sunset Valley Secondary School. A fact that his honor-roll mother constantly harped on; the fact that to her, he was an abject failure in academics and by extension, life. That she utterly gave up on him as being anyone noteworthy; deserving nothing but criticism and disdain. Well, it was no surprise as far as Haruo was concerned. His mother had never thought of him as being much anyways. As far as she was concerned, he was a waste of oxygen. He paused a moment looking across the lake up at Summerhill Court seeing the fish jumping...and being surprised at the resentment that it fostered within him. How happy they look with no cares in the world...he thought to himself. At least they have no other worries than an eagle or an osprey swooping down out of the sky and eating them. The rest of the time they can enjoy a life of swimming aimlessly in the pond and feeding on mosquito grubs. He snorted derisively as he sat on a bench in the park staring aimlessly at the pond that had fish.This morning had been another of Mayumi’s screaming matches with him since as of late he decided he was no longer going to put up with the crap that his mother was dishing out at him and he finally turned on his heel and stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind him, cutting off his mother’s “If you don’t like it...there’s the door…” threat in mid-stream. He wasn’t sure if he was even going to go back to his parents’ house. He could only stare at the ground in hopes that some solution would come to him if he thought long and hard about it.

Fiona McIrish’s House, Asilomar, Sunset Valley, BC

As far as River McIrish knew Haruo was not at home when she ended up getting his mother on the phone. Mrs. Chikamori sounded pissed off from what River could discern from the frigid tone that she got in answer.

"I don’t know where he is...and right now, I really don’t care where he is."

River drew back from her phone as if she was burned. Well if that is the case, then I’ll have to go hunt him down myself. She thought acidly. Mrs. Chikamori deserved a good thrashing, but she wasn’t going to be the one to administer it. Frankly as far as River was concerned, Mrs. Chikamori was not worth going to gaol for.

Frankly, if she couldn’t get anything out of Mrs. Chikamori, River was going to go ahead and do what she had to in order to locate Haruo.

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