Chapter 3: Monster (1)

As I watched the colorful scenery of vast tracts of land littered with grass, trees, mountains and hills pass us by as the convoy made a steady course northbound at a steady speed of one hundred kilometers per hour, my mind briefly zoned out as my thoughts explored the important turning points of my past which eventually led to where I currently am today.

It is only now when I take my time to explore these thoughts that I truly realize that from the very beginning, I was too far removed from what was considered normal by ordinary people even when I was still a child. My eyes glazed over as I recalled the series of events which eventually led to me becoming who I am right now.

We were still living at Lake Water Town and I was still six years old in my first year of elementary school when it happened. I was the first and only son amongst four other daughters born to the Patriarch of the third branch of the Hassaikai Ducal family and due to the fact that two more daughters were born after me despite my parents' best efforts to sire more male children; I was the favorite child of the family and was heavily spoiled by all my older sisters and my parents.

My younger twin sisters hated me for as long as I could remember at that time since they always felt that they were being mistreated and neglected. They automatically assumed that I was hogging all the love they could have been receiving from our father and frankly speaking, they weren't necessarily wrong.

Even the six-year-old me did not fail to notice the blatant neglect and disregard my Father had for the two twins, Aina and Aila. It was very normal when you considered the fact that our society is one which puts heavy emphasis and regard for the patriarchal system.

Things like women's rights were nothing more than a fairy tale as women were seen as nothing more than decorated vases used for breeding and taking care of the menial household chores which men could never be bothered with doing.

Men all shared the same responsibility of serving the best interests of the empire and had a sacred duty of continuing the family bloodline which was especially important amongst the eight Ducal households.

My family's branch would have been automatically cut off from the main family should my parents had not been able to sire a son on their fifth try. Luckily, I came along and so they were spared, but as a consequence for the worry and loss of face for the main family the caused, my family which was originally the first side family branch was demoted to third and my parents were assigned to the far north of the empire where they would preside over an inconspicuous isolated town normally overlooked by everyone including the GPS systems and local country maps.

It was the sort of town where no-one else in the capital even knew of its name, let alone its existence, so for all intents and purposes, the assignment of my family to Lake water town was basically a banishment.

My late Father was bitter about this fact and when he tried to sire more sons to increase the worth of the family in the eyes of the main family, he was met with disappointment in the form of my two younger twin sisters. Despite knowing about genetics and the fact that males were the ones truly responsible for the determination of the sex of the offspring, my late father laid all the blame squarely on the shoulders of my mother resulting in her receiving beatings on a daily basis.

Even my little sisters weren't spared as despite being three years old at that time, our father would lash them with a corded whip as though he was whipping some stray dogs for the most minor of offenses like spilling food on the table and whenever my poor mother tried to intervene, she would wake up the following morning nursing a few broken bones.

The sad series of events continued on for another year unbeknownst to me since both my parents and my older sisters expertly hid the truth from me and my young life carried on in oblivion. Despite their best efforts to act normal whenever I was around, cracks started to form in their wall of lies when they failed to account for the fact that I was abnormally hypersensitive and aware of my surroundings and moods of the people around me. The few clues that they dropped with their body language were enough to tip me off to the fact that something was indeed wrong.

Despite my abnormal disposition, I was still nothing more than a child so I had no life experiences to draw from and cross-reference in order to reach the informed conclusion that our family was one which was rife with domestic violence under the rule of the cruel iron-gloved hand of our abusive father.

He had ordered them not to show any signs of disharmony which could tip me off to anything wrong. Whenever I was around, they became the perfect loving family in harmony and at peace with each other, but whenever I wasn't around, my father's inner demons would come out to play.

Another thing he failed to account for was the fact that my younger twin sisters were nothing more than children at the end of the day. Threats and violence could effectively shut up the mouth of a child but when the violence eventually reached a threshold far beyond what they could endure, they were prone to withdrawing within themselves or eventually breaking down as people ending up as nothing more than puppets with no personality and decision-making capabilities of their own. Those who broke down would live out the rest of their lives subject to the whims and orders of their tormenter making helping them especially hard.

It is worth saying that it would have been impossible for me to salvage the situation in the case of my twin sisters because they were still in the delicate phase where they were still learning to interact with the world. Should they have become molded to become nothing more than mindless puppets, saving them would have been a hellish task and a life-long endeavor. 

I was especially thankful to whatever deity who watched and presided over our world that my twin sisters fell under the first category of those who withdrew themselves. Apply enough stimulus to them whether negative or positive and you would eventually have them withdrawing from their shells when they felt the need to vent their frustrations.

It was especially easy since my sisters were still little children at the end of the day and when you factored in the fact that I was oblivious to the situation and was blindly trying to interact with them as an older sibling to his younger sisters, it eventually led to a situation where Aila, the younger of the twins vented out her frustrations and hate for me disgusted by the fact that I was happily trying to interact with them despite being the indirect cause of their misery and suffering.