Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-06-19 14:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, yue katou |
Who: Katou
What: Katou goes to visit his father for the first time since he died.
When: This evening, Father's Day
Where: The Cemetery
Rating/Warning: Teenish. Binge drinking and language. Non-graphic references to past drug use and child abuse.
Status: Complete
It had been over a year since Katou’s father had died of a heart attack, and this was the first time Katou had come to the cemetery. He’d skipped his father’s funeral in favour of getting high instead. His wake too. And he hadn’t gone to visit him in the hospital either. And no matter how much he told himself that his father wouldn’t have wanted him at those places anyway, it was still one of his greatest regrets.
He and Sae had reconnected shortly after their father died. Kind of. Katou’d been over for dinner a half dozen times, got to know her husband a little, played with his nephew. He’d even had Christmas with his mother, though he was half convinced it had been some kind of weird Orange County magic that had made that happen. She’d been glad to see him, but Katou still felt uncomfortable around her. But he was going to see both of them later that week, when they showed up for his high school graduation.
It should have been chillier. A chill wind, maybe autumn. Whenever Katou had thought of himself being in a cemetery, it sure wasn’t this hot, birds chirping cheerily, sun beating down despite the fact that it wasn’t long until sunset. He’d thought about coming earlier, but he’d made sure he’d kept himself busy during the day. The night before, Ed had come over and helped him with study for his science finals by throwing chocolate at him. He and Anna had studied for a couple of hours that morning, then he’d gone to Wash’s with pizza and beer. Mostly to check up on Carolina and to make sure Wash was doing okay, though there was a big part of himself that was glad for the company of one of his best friends on Father’s Day, despite the shitty circumstances leading up to it. After that, Katou’d hit the bar for a couple of hours, and now, here he was, six pack in hand, spending Father’s Day with his father for the first time in years.
“S’up, pops?” Katou said, cracking open a can of beer and taking a swig. “Hope Hell’s treating you alright. I don’t really know what I’m doing here. It ain’t like you can hear me or nothing. Or if you’d really care if you could.” He frowned, then shook his head. “Anyway. I’m doing that whole staying clean thing now. You know, twelve steps and whatever. One of ‘em is make amends. I did it with Sae, and I haven’t really like, formally done it with mom yet, but I’m thinking she and I are even anyway.” Maybe that wasn’t how it was supposed to work, but Katou really couldn’t bring himself to apologize for doing running away and doing drugs and yelling at her when she deserved it.
“So, I was trying to think. You know like, if the old man was alive, what would I say to him? How would I make amends with you? And then it came to me that I ain’t got nothing to apologize for. I didn’t do shit wrong. That was all on you, you fucking asshole. And no wonder mom fucking cheated on you. If there was ever a man to drive a woman to cheat, it’d be you. I wouldn’t want your shitty genes anyway. Look at the person you already turned me into. Imagine how much worse I’d be if I had your blood running through my veins.”
Katou chugged back the rest of the beer in an effort to calm himself down, but when the can was empty his anger hadn’t abated. Instead, he crushed the can and threw it hard at the tombstone. He cracked another beer, then chugged it back as well. This one, he didn’t throw, just crushed it and dropped it, then opened another.
He stood up, and glared down his nose at the tombstone. Satoshi Katou, 1979 - 2015. “I came here to tell you I forgive you. To tell you that I let it go, and that I’ve moved on. I’m in an alright place, with people who actually care about me. But that ain’t ever what you wanted for me anyway. You're probably rolling around in your grave with the thought that I’m alive and you’re fucking rotting. So get fucked,” he said, the last word punctuated by him kicking the tombstone. “You don’t deserve my fucking forgiveness.”
And then he chugged back the rest of his beer, dropped it on the tombstone, and turned to leave as the sun sunk down under the horizon.