School Girls' Stories - New Generation

Chapter 42 – Repercussions

When a person does something they know they should not, there is a reason; deep down, that they feel this way. Ashe felt it from the very first day he began planning his death, and planning what would happen. He did in fact jump into that Chicago River, and they did in fact find his bloodstained coat, and he did in fact almost die from a lack of antibiotics, but the blood was from a cut in his arm he made purposefully. He knew he should not have done something so foolish, but it felt right, while it felt wrong, and he was feeling the repercussions of that action while he remained under house arrest with a father who would not look him in the eye, and a mother who could not even be in the same room as him, and a sister who kept out of sight.

House arrest was turning out to be the worst thing for him. During the day his sister was at school, his family was at work, and he was allowed a gaping house all to himself. The maids were dismissed during the days, they could clean while everyone was home and there, almost like they thought Ashe would do something foolish to the help.

Fuji and Amatsu were at a loss of things to do. Their business was falling apart under the pressure, and with the arrest of Devilin many people were beginning to lose trust in a company that had hired a child molester. Rumors grow and become worse and worse, and with it the Inperiaru family were shaken and faced with the first real threat of losing their fortune.

It was over a month before someone came to visit Ashe, and it was someone he wanted to see least of all. Harmony stood at the door, looking miserable as she looked up at him, though she was supposed to be in school. Ashe was not sure if he wanted to slam the door in her face or welcome the only person who bothered to have come to visit him. He knew it would be an unpleasant visit, no matter.

“Come on in,” he said, “though you aren’t supposed to be here. What if your mom catches you.”

“Mom doesn’t care,” Harmony snapped his way. “She’s more worried about Shu living in his new apartment by himself, and Bliss visiting her father every weekend, and Darrke just being solemn and morbid. I’m the odd one out, I always have been.”

“Maybe she knows you’re a little liar and she’s given up on your finally,” Ashe spoke cruelly. Harmony turned on him, her eyes blazing. There was no sign of hurt in her, the words did not sting like they were meant to. She had let it roll off of her without a care.

“Oh, so I’m the liar,” Harmony spat. “I’m not the one who pretended to be dead for almost a year, you bastard. We missed you.”

“You missed me so much you still never admitted what you did, did you?” Ashe snapped. “You missed me then, too, huh? Enough to blame me for something you did?”

“Ashe, I was young…”

“And you still are,” he snapped back. “You are a privileged prissy bitch, you have no idea what life is really like out there.”

“You were a privileged spoiled asshole until you left,” Harmony snapped back. “I suppose you are now going to tell me all about the mean cold hard streets out there. You know, the drugs you probably did, the girls you probably did, and the men who probably did you? Was it that hard?”

Ashe rolled his eyes. She wanted to hurt him back, though she was not hurting. The natural instinct of being insulted is to insult back, even if you do not feel that way. Ashe stepped away from her, thinking to himself of the things that Harmony had done and said over the years of them being together. He had been young, and dumb, and had not known what he was doing, and instead he had found Harmony, someone equally as lost in a world that did not treat them the way they thought they deserved. The difference was Ashe realized he had control and turned it in his favor.

“You know I met my real parents,” he said, instead of all of the things on the tip of his tongue. “I went to their house when I became desperate, I was going to tell them what my parents had did, I was going to tell them that I was their son and that their son had not really died, but then I got there, and I couldn’t.”

“A flick of conscience?” Harmony asked bitterly.

Ashe laughed and shook his head. “No, when I saw them, and who they are, I could not force the words out of my mouth. On television, or Lifetime, whenever a person meets their real family they are this loving couple who are happy to welcome you back into your life. They hug you and say how much they have longed for that day and show you mementos that they bought celebrating the day you would have been born. My parents… were not like that.”

“Boo hoo, your parents weren’t perfect, neither are Fuji and Amatsu,” Harmony snarled.

“No, but compared to them Fuji and Amatsu are,” Ashe laughed. “The couple had five children, five,” Ashe laughed crookedly. “They were living in squalor, treating them like they were less than human, the youngest barely wearing enough clothes to make it through the winter, shivering and looking miserable. I told the parents I was part of the consensus and I had to take a head count, they believed me, some teenager in a leather jacket. I mentioned that I had it on my list they had had another child, who was not their first child I found out. They said that the baby died, but that was all right, they were not ready for that child, they had another one a year or so later. That one died at age five when he was hit by a car. And still, it did not seem to deter them with life.”

“You know I did not come here to hear your life story.” Harmony flopped herself onto the couch and watched Ashe laugh to himself.

“Of course you didn’t,” he said and sat on the chair across from her, not wanting too close to this girl who was more unfeeling than he ever remembered her. “What is it you want Harmony?”

“I want to know if you ever loved me.”

“That’s it?” Ashe asked mockingly. “You came all of the way here, ditching school, so you could ask me if I ever felt for you what you felt for me? No, Harmony, I never loved you. I loathed you in the end, even as we were still together. I wanted you to suffer, and I see it worked. With my death one person suffered most, and it was you.”

“Why?” Harmony asked, her voice void of all emotion. “Why did you go through all of the trouble of doing what you did? Why fake your own death? Who was it all for?”

“It was for me,” Ashe laughed. “I wanted away from you, from Sora and Shu, from Rhapsody and my parents. I wanted a life that did not revolve around the lies that we as family have built.”

“Did you find it?”

“No,” Ashe said honestly and solemnly. “I found that I was better off here than I was out there, for many reasons, not just being a spoiled asshole. No, I found my parents and Rhapsody were not so horrible, but you, Harmony, and Sora and Shu, I’m not through with you. So if you came over to find any truth, just know that my revenge against you three has barely even begun.”