As the days went on, the girl ended up going to that place every single day. Her father had apparently thought she was still having sleep troubles, thinking that she was trying to do something about that.
But that wasn’t the case.
Kairos watched his younger self meet up with her every single day so far. Sometimes they would talk about meaningful things and the girl would reach… “enlightenment” of sorts. Other times, they would do rather pointless things, sometimes even getting to the point of talking about a rock that was by the side of the street.
“The rock has a lot of white spots, but you can only see them if you look really close!”
“Wow!”
Regardless, the girl seemed to really enjoy it. She gradually changed from a very quiet and reserved person to one that was slowly getting more talkative and expressive. Without realizing it, there was a bright smile on her face as she excitedly fumbled about with her words.
“I really think that um- sliding down the slide is pretty fun.”
Kairos tilted his head to the side curiously.
“But we haven’t even slid down the slide.”
As he watched all of this happening, he felt his eyelid twitch in awkwardness. It was because he realized that his younger self was rubbing off on this girl, for better or worse. The only thing he felt uncomfortable about was that it almost looked like she was becoming a copy of him.
She would willingly imitate most of his actions and seemed to take anything he had said as the gospel.
As this continued to get worse, he came to realize something.
That her personality was getting awfully similar to Tori’s. There were still some fundamental differences here and there, but now he couldn’t help but realize the growing connection between the girl in front of him and the Tori he knew.
It was at this point a big question formed in the back of his mind.
Why hadn’t they told each other their names yet?
It seemed that both of their… lacking social skills had combined to make this rather strange situation.
Whenever they referred to the other, they would use things like ‘you’ and used things like ‘I’ and ‘me’ to refer to themself. As such, Kairos couldn’t completely confirm that the two of them were the same.
As he was dwelling on it, watching the girl leave the dojo near the night once more, before getting stopped by her father, who yelled rather overbearingly.
“What are you doing?”
The girl turned around casually, with a smile on her face.
“I finished training so I’m going to meet someone!”
Her father’s eyes narrowed intensely. Kairos could recognize that kind of expression easily, to the point that he couldn’t miss it even if he wanted to. The kind people make when they feel that they should hold more power over people.
The kind that feels displeasure when those considered ‘below’ didn’t show fear.
Kairos already felt disgust before he even did anything. And it did not take long for her father to prove Kairos right.
“Going out to meet someone? You have to go to sleep! How are you supposed to recover normally then? Don’t you remember how you somehow crippled your own body? Making a mistake is one thing, but repeating it is too far!”
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“But I’ve been sleeping fine. I never stay out too late either…”
For a split second, her father’s expression froze up. Kairos internally let out a soft sigh. He could already see what the father was feeling. That he was proven wrong and had no real logical comeback.
This was indeed true. She would never stay out too late, and from that point on she slept fine. Her father quickly recovered himself, and from that point, he began screaming at the top of his lungs.
“STAY HOME AND SLEEP. DID YOU NOT HEAR ME?”
But certain people just had an ego that was too big, whether they realized it or not. The kind of ego that unconsciously develops as a parent raises their child.
The parent is smarter.
The parent is correct.
The parent should ‘guide’ all their child’s decisions.
That a child’s resistance should be disciplined.
That they had to be obedient.
The parent should be feared.
It wasn’t about actually being correct, but rather protecting that selfish ego. It’s quite obvious to the observer, but for the person in question, it doesn’t seem like they are doing anything wrong. In fact, they probably think that they are doing something noble. That they should be praised for their actions as a good member of society.
The girl looked back at her father with a straight face.
“Why are you screaming? Can’t we talk about this calmly?”
Her father’s face had reddened considerably. It was an actually mature response, making it appear that he was actually the child. This hurt his pride, causing him to scream even louder.
“I’M SCREAMING?! I’M JUST TALKING NORMALLY. YOU’RE THE ONE THAT’S SCREAMING.”
The way the girl looked at her father changed. It was more of a hollow gaze. Though Kairos could feel her thoughts, he didn’t need that to know that she had lost faith in her father.
After a moment of silence, the girl nodded.
“Ok.”
Her father slammed his fist against the wall.
“GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW. YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE DOJO FOR A MONTH.”
Now, this sentence set the girl off.
“Excuse me? All I did was go outside for an hour. I still did all my training like you asked. You never even said I couldn’t go out in the first place.”
Her father replied with a yell, getting more unreasonable with every word he said. Eventually, the girl couldn’t take it and began screaming as well. Soon, it progressed into territory that Kairos didn’t really wish to see.
The father was beating his daughter up. While choking her out with one hand, he mercilessly punched her with the other, giving her a black eye. At the end of the day, the girl was still young. Despite training hard, her father had similarly trained, and for longer.
She was thrown around like a sandbag.
Even after getting beaten unconscious, he continued to beat her up. Once he finally came to his senses, he was roughly breathing above her. His hand slowly released to show her purple bruised neck.
It almost looked like she died, but she was still barely breathing.
Kairos couldn’t help but feel a laugh coming out of him.
Because even now, he saw that the father felt justified in his actions. That he was the one in the right.
…Even when his daughter pointed out that he was wrong.
Kairos felt disdain but didn’t feel any particular hatred for the man. Because he knew that most people were like him. They just didn’t show their true colors until a certain situation presented itself to them.
In the end, the girl was grounded for a month. Not that she could really get out of the house anyway, because she had to spend that time in bed. Naturally, her father blamed the whole situation on her, because getting beaten unconscious was obviously her fault, and not the person who beat her.
He didn’t forget to mention several times that the training she missed now would be made up for later.
After two weeks, she found herself functioning enough to stand up and walk. But it was only just barely. She no longer cared about what her father thought and tried to get up.
She planned on going to meet with Kairos’ younger self once more and explain everything.
While wincing, she slowly made her way forth. Though in pain, she was trained to be hardy, thus didn’t let out any grunts and silently made her way out. Limping through the streets, she slowly made her way to their meeting spots.
The streets were filled with people, meaning that many unintentionally bumped into her. With her current condition, it did not take long for her to directly collapse, falling face-first onto the sidewalk.
The person responsible hastily apologized before hurrying on. It seemed that people cared more about their own business than anything else.
However, the girl was strong. She kept moving forth, vaguely giving Kairos the image of a warrior. Though, he quickly woke up from that, realizing the sight was just a girl weakly making her way through a crowd of people.
After falling a few more times, she finally made it to the park.
Relief washed over her, and she ended up falling right at the entrance, landing on the wood chips. They cut into her skin, but she couldn’t even really recognize that at this point.
Instead, she pushed herself up and made her way to the swings on all fours. She tried to get on said swing, but could only put her stomach on it while the rest of her body hung like a ragdoll.
And so, she waited.
It was still early, so she wasn’t expecting him to be there.
Once evening came, she began to feel some anticipation, despite knowing it was unrealistic for him to come this early.
At night, she was really excited, feeling that Kairos’ younger self would come around the corner any second now.
And she hung there for hours, just waiting.
Thinking that he would come any moment now.
Once she realized he was clearly late, she only thought it was natural considering how she wasn’t there for two weeks.
After being well into the dead of the night, a thought suddenly surfaced in her mind. What if Kairos wasn’t coming? What if… he stopped coming because she had stopped?
It was something so reasonable, but she denied it with everything in her heart. However, her mind couldn’t shake it off, the thoughts circling around her almost like a vulture.
Despair began to settle in.
The moon hung up high in the sky, casting just enough light for the girl to see everything around her. There was nobody around. After all, it was the middle of the night. Other than the slight creaks the swing would give from time to time, there was no sound.
Nothing was there.
For the second time in her life, she watched the sun slowly rise from the dead of night. Both times there was a change in her life. The first being, the first gears turning as she changed her mentality.
But now, it was agony.
She felt as though she lost Kairos entirely. Though the girl knew that she enjoyed their time together, she didn’t realize how much it actually mattered until she felt it slip through her hands.
Then, the girl broke down.