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“Otou-san, where's the rest of our family?”
Karai sat on the edge of her bed, kicking her feet back and forth as she watched her father rummage through the dresser for her pajamas. At first he'd grabbed her ducky pajamas, but she did not want to wear the duckies. So he was trying to find something more suitable—kitties, maybe, or turtles. Or, he had been. Now he was still, staring blankly down into the drawer.
Karai frowned, her feet stilling in return. “Otou-san?”
Like a re-wound toy, her father jerked back to life. “We don't have any other family,” he said gruffly, kneeling in front of her and helping to pull the pajama shirt over her head. He'd found the turtles after all. “It's just you and me, Karai.”
She pouted at him as her head popped through the neck hole. “Why? Shini has four sisters, and a bunch of cousins! And Minato lives with his grandma and grandpa.”
Her father smiled at her—fond, if a little stiff—and ran his fingers through her mussed-up hair. “That is just the life we were dealt. I am content with the family I have now. Are you not?”
Was she? Karai frowned in thought. Shini’s sisters were all cool, but all Shini ever did was complain about them stealing her toys and ganging up on her during during hide-and-seek. And Minato’s grandpa snored. Besides, she liked having the whole house to themselves. She hummed. “Maybe I'd be more content if we had a kitten, too,” she said slyly, and her father laughed, a low rumble that she always loved hearing.
“Is that so?” he asked as he draped the blankets over her, laughter coloring his words. Before she could even ask, he handed her back her stuffed elephant that always fell to the floor in the night.
“Yup!” She nodded once, very serious, as she held her elephant tight against her chest.
“Well, I will have to take your opinion into consideration.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head—and then to elephant’s head, at her demand—and left her to her rest.
~~~
Karai danced across the floorboards, light on her feet as she practiced her katas. Otou-san was busy with work, again, and Shini had her witchy lessons that Karai wasn't allowed to see yet, so she was left to entertain herself. Which she was pretty good at, if you asked her. For example, right now, she was trying to do her katas without ever stepping on the lines between the floorboards and while reciting different foods with each step. And she knew a lot of foods.
After a half hour, she ran out. With a groan of frustration, Karai fell onto her back, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. She would have so many more options if she had someone else here! Hayate and Nozomi were cousins, and even though they were a few years apart they were always hanging out after school. And Karai wasn't stupid, she knew where babies came from. Her mom was dead, she knew that much—killed in the fire that had burned her father when she was a baby. But her mom and dad both had to have come from somewhere.
Maybe otou-san couldn't remember? She couldn't remember her mom, after all. When Karai thought of her, all she could see were the few pictures her father had shown her.
Oh! A smile brightened her face, and with a light grunt of exertion she was back on her feet. Maybe there's other pictures! Her father had mentioned growing up in this house a few times, and there were plenty of boxes that looked way older than her hidden away in the various closets. She'd rummaged through most of them over the years, mostly just finding stacks of dusty books (boring) or old blankets (also boring). But she'd never checked her father's storage…
After checking that he hadn't somehow snuck back into the house without her realizing—he was a ninja, and very sneaky, but Karai was really good at catching him, he said so!—she crept down the hallway and into his room. There was only one closet she hadn't ever seen him go into, and so she went to that one first. As expected, there were falling-apart boxes shoved way in the back, and Karai smiled wider at the sight. Each box was dusty, enough that her eyes watered and her throat itched when she opened the first one. Which definitely meant her father hadn't checked it recently, so she must be on the right track!
The first box was mostly boring papers. All text, no pictures. With a grimace, she quickly moved on. The next one looked like old clothes—maybe from when her father was a kid? Kinda cool, but not what she was looking for.
She struck gold with the third box. Under a maroon gi emblazoned with a symbol she didn't recognize—some sort of gear, or a flower?—was a tangled bundle of jewelry, and below that, a photo album. Excitement curling in her stomach, she pulled it free and retreated to flop onto her father's bed.
As she flipped through the pages, the first thing she noticed was that there were always two boys. She couldn't tell which one was her father, pre-burns and pre-aging, but she knew it had to be one of them. The book started with two little kids, a little younger than her, both with black hair and dark eyes. One looked a little younger than the other, but probably not by much. Neither child was looking at the camera, too distracted with the toy the younger one held.
A cousin? This was exactly what she'd been looking for! Otou-san was going to be so excited when he saw this! Obviously, Karai loved her dad. She was happy to have him to herself; from what she heard from her classmates, it would be so annoying to have a sibling to take some of his attention. Or to take one of her rooms. But it would still be fun to have a few other family members, right?
Karai continued to flip through the album, watching the two boys grow in celluloid. Her age, then preteens, then teenagers. She kept waiting for one of them to disappear. Looking at the two men, now, leaning on each other with wide smiles—and yes, now she could tell which one was her father—she was sure they would remember each other.
It was when she came across a photo with her mother that she decided she should just ask. They must have been close, for the other man to have his arms around both her father and her mother. Maybe he had died in the fire, too?
Right on cue, Karai heard the front door swing shut. Carefully, she pulled the last photo out and left the rest atop the mattress, bounding through the house to where her father waited. “Otou-san! Look what I found!”
A familiar, indulgent smile on his face, her father crouched down to her level. “What do you have, Karai?”
“Look!” She squeezed close and held the photo out so they both could see it, too distracted to notice the way his breath hitched, the way he went stiff behind her. “I wanted to look and see if we had any family that maybe you just forgot about, and I found a whole book of pictures! I think this one is you,” she pointed to the paler, more sullen one to the left, “and that's okaasan, so who's the other guy? I thought maybe—”
She wasn't sure what she expected to see, when she looked back at her father. Joy? Excitement? Sadness, maybe, if she was right that the mysterious man had died?
She didn't expect rage. Her breath caught in her throat at the fury in his eyes, words drying up on her tongue. She remained silent as he ripped the photo from her hand, crumpling it in his grasp. “What made you think you were welcome to go through my room?” he spat, words like venom, and Karai couldn't quite stammer out a response before he stood, looming over her in a way that made him feel twice as tall. “Do you not think I would have told you if this man was important? You would rather go behind my back than trust in my choices?”
“N-no, I just—”
“You just nothing,” her father growled, and tears flooded Karai's eyes at the unbridled anger in his voice. “You are my daughter, and you will listen to what I say. This man is nothing, do you understand me?”
She somehow managed a shaky, “hai,” through the tightness in her throat and the burning in her eyes, and he stormed out without a second glance. He had never left her while she was crying before—especially if he'd been the one to cause it, like when he told her she had to finish her food, or when he thought her drawing of a lizard was supposed to be a horse—but now she stood in the foyer, choking on sobs as tears ran down her cheeks and listening to the crashes emanating from her father's room, and she was alone. Her heart jumped with each bang, until she was sure it would give out. She wanted to cover her ears, but she could still feel his cold eyes on her, freezing her solid.
After an eternity, the house was silent again. A moment later, Karai heard the back door open and then slam shut, and, limbs thawed and misery renewed, she fled into her room. Blankets over her head, squeezing her elephant until she was sure he would pop, she cried.
She wasn't sure how long she was alone. An hour, at least. Her sobs had petered into sniffles when she felt the mattress dip beneath another weight. A hand touched her shoulder through the blanket, but it retreated when she flinched away. Her father's voice was soft when he finally spoke.
“Karai?”
Silence followed. She didn't want to talk to him! He was mean and she was never going to talk to him again, no matter how long he waited.
“I'm sorry, Karai. I didn't mean to scare you.”
Despite herself, Karai couldn't let that slide. “I wasn't scared,” she mumbled, curling tighter around her toy.
“Of course not. My mistake.” Karai pretended not to hear the amusement in his voice. “But still, I shouldn't have yelled at you. I didn't mean to, but you upset me.”
“I wasn't trying to…”
“I know. And neither was I. Will you come out from the blankets, Karai?”
She huffed. “Why?”
“I brought you some daigaku imo, but you'll get your blanket sticky if you eat it in there.”
Karai perked up at the mention of candied sweet potatoes—one of her favorites. Now that she was paying attention, she could smell the sweetness in the air—he must have stopped in town to get them fresh for her. Still a bit hesitant, she sat up, blanket falling around her shoulders as she scrubbed at her bruised-feeling eyes. When her father offered her the plate she grabbed one, nibbling at it as she stared down into her lap rather than meeting his eyes.
Her father sighed, heavy and exhausted. “I don't want to yell at you again, Karai. I didn't enjoy it. And I will try not to, but you need to do the same. You need to leave my history alone. Can you do that for me?”
Karai bit her lip, now sticky with sugar, and nodded. When she hazarded a glance at his face, his expression was soft again. The father she was used to had replaced the monster. This time, when he reached for her, she went, curling against his chest and accepting the comfort for what it was.
As she grew, the memory faded into a vague nightmare, too out-of-character to be real. The strange man's face, so briefly seen, was forgotten.
~~~
Karai knelt before her father in their new, weird home in this new, weird city. She didn't like it here. It was fun getting to use her skills as a kunoichi in a new place, and the mutant, Leonardo, was fun, but she missed her home. She missed her friends. She missed her school, and her favorite restaurants, and the stream her and Shini would hang out at.
She missed her father. The way he had been before she saw some news report about ninja in New York and lost his fucking mind about it. He was a strict guy, sure, and could be pretty harsh with his subordinates when the situation called for it, but she'd never seen him so…
Aggressive. So cruel. But she understood, to an extent. The day he'd told her they were leaving, he explained why. Told her that her mother's death hadn't been a tragic accident, but a murder. Told her that the murderer was alive, in New York. Anyone would be a little on-edge, right? Would have a shorter fuse. It wasn't like she was happy with that knowledge, and she'd only just learned the murderer even existed.
“Karai,” he began, voice booming in this stupid, echoey room. “I have learned that you had an opportunity to dispatch Leonardo.”
“Really?” She kept her tone light, only barely staving off an eye-roll. She was used to seeing his whole ‘disappointed boss’ schtick from the sidelines—it didn’t have the same impact on her. It was too obvious.
“But you let him go, instead.”
“That's not true,” Karai scoffed, as if she wasn't lying to his face. “He escaped.”
Her father's tone darkened further. “I find that hard to believe.”
She raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk. “He escaped from you, didn't he?”
It was a joke the old him would have appreciated. Smiled at, maybe, if not outright laughed. It was the two of them against the world, after all, and he was always entertained by her lighthearted backtalk. Like they were peers.
“Enough,” the new him growled, getting to his feet and stalking towards her. His tekkō-kagi extended with a sharp clank, like a threat, and her heart turned to ice in her chest. “Next time you see Leonardo, you must finish him, understood?”
Karai looked up at him, looming over her, and it didn't feel like ‘them against the world’ anymore. Her father was close enough to touch, and she was alone.
Throat tight, she whispered, “Understood,” and wondered why this felt so familiar.