Episode 22

~Mother’s Perspective~.

A few days had passed since we learned on the morning news that Tohru chan was not guilty.

Tohru chan still seemed to be angry with us.

Whenever I tried to talk to him, he would mostly either ignore me or respond in a curt manner.

The kind Tohru chan of the past would never have ignored me, his parent, but now he doesn’t even give me a short reply.

“Dear…..what should I do with you…..”

“I’ll put him in a better mood if I cook her a nice meal.”

I discussed the matter with my husband and decided to treat Tohru chan to a delicious meal using fine ingredients.

I thought he would be in a better mood if I served him an expensive lunch as an apology for not believing in his innocence.

However, Tohru chan never turned his head to our efforts.

“I’ll eat with my friends today.”

“Wait..! Tohru chan !”

“Hey, Tohru ! Don’t be like that !? Your mother worked hard all morning to make this for you !”

“Hmm? Why did you suddenly start cooking for me today? Until recently, you didn’t make me dinner, lunch, or breakfast, right? So I thought maybe you wouldn’t cook for me today either, so I made a promise to go out to eat with my friends.”

“…..”

I couldn’t say anything back after being told that.

Even though Tohru chan may have committed a sexual crime, I regretted my past behavior now, saying that it was too much to not serve him a meal.

“Hey, Tohru ! !”

While I was disappointed that Tohru chan could not eat the home-cooked meal I had gone to the trouble of preparing, my husband tried to call Tohru chan to stop him.

At that moment, the intercom rang and a stranger came to our house.

“My name is Saito from the 00 Newspaper. I was wondering if I could interview you about the incident that happened at the Kisaragi household.”

The man was a reporter for a major newspaper.

He wanted to interview Tohru chan to cover the incident at the Kisaragi home.

My husband tried to get the reporter to leave without an appointment, but Tohru chan pushed him out of the way.

He then went on to give a full account of the incident, including details that did not need to be told.

We, his parents, felt very uncomfortable listening to the whole interview because we didn’t trust Tohru chan.

“How did the people around you react after the incident?”

“No one took my side. Even my family members accused me of being a criminal.”

[ [….] ]

Tohru chan revealed this to the reporter.

The reporter looked at us as if he was accusing us of something when he found out that we had not even served Tohru chan any food.

“I wonder if you’re all right…”

After the interview was over, Tohru chan also left the house to have lunch with his friend.

I was worried that the reporter might write something untoward in the newspaper.

“Well, I guess it will be all right. It will be treated as one of the many crimes that occur every day in various parts of the country.”

My husband seemed to be completely underestimating the fact that this would not be a problem.

But I had a bad feeling.

I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen to us afterwards.

………And my bad prediction came true.

“W-what is this !? How did this happen….?”

“Ah, I knew it…”

When an article about the incident at the Kisaragi household appeared in a major newspaper and was published on the Internet, it was immediately spread on  social media, and then went up in flames.

The cause of the flames was not Kisaragi Himehana and her father who set Tohru chan up, but us parents who joined the public in attacking him.

[They treated their own son like a criminal. Scum parents.]

[Typical parents.]

[Parents are a big disappointment.]

[This poor kid, Shinonome Tohru, is so pitiful.]

[It must be really tough to be denied even by your family.]

[That’s the part where the family should be the most supportive.]

[I guess public opinion outweighed her love for her son.]

“They’re not good parents.”

[Toxic parents.]

[Why don’t you quit being a parent?]

[We don’t need parents who don’t love their children.]

[You’re a real asshole, a parent who doesn’t just protect your falsely accused son, but bullies him along with everyone.]

In the eyes of the public, it was absolutely unforgivable that we, the parents, falsely accused of abusing our son, Tohru chan.

We were slammed to pieces, called toxic parents, parental guttersnipes, and so on.

……And our misery continued.

“Hey…your blog is the reason why the phone calls from my office won’t stop…what are you going to do about it?”

“Eh, dear…? What do you mean?”

“They identified the blog you were writing on the Internet ! From the pictures that were up there, the Internet guys even figured out the company I work for ! ! ! Right now, the company’s social networking sites and website are on fire……and they’re getting a flood of calls with complaints…..ah, what’s going to happen to me…?”

“Oh no…”

Apparently my daily blog has been identified by the people on the internet who have set this incident ablaze.

I had been writing about my family and my husband on my online blog, uploading photos, etc., and it seems that the company my husband is currently working for has been identified from there.

This is the worst thing that could have happened……I-I’m going to go to work for a while…”

“….Y-yes.”

My husband left the house with a pale look on his face and headed for the office.

I could only hope and pray that the situation, which was now out of our control, would soon be under control.

That night, my husband came home looking as if his soul had been drained out of him.

“What’s wrong…dear…?”

“…”

I asked my husband, who came home with empty eyes and said nothing, what had happened.

My husband, who had been drooping his head, slowly looked up.

His expression gradually became tinged with anger.

“You…it’s your fault…! ! !”

Slap ! !

“Kyaa !?”

A snarling slap flew.

There was a dry thud, and I was hit in the cheek, blown away and knocked to the ground.

“I’ve been working for more than 10 years ! ! I’ve worked hard to provide for our family ! ! ! All that effort… all that hard work….. has gone to waste ! ! ! How can you take responsibility for that ! !”

“Stop…please dear…stop…… ! ! !”

My husband yelled at me with such force that he wanted to kill me.

I was just so afraid of being violated that I just held my head in my hands and cowered.

My husband’s words were incoherent as he yelled at me in anger, but I understood that he had been fired from his job.

Later, when my husband finally calmed down, I asked him what had happened. He told me that he had been kicked out of his current company, where he had worked for more than 10 years, because of the current flame war.

Because of the commotion on the Internet, the reputation of my husband’s company fell to the ground, the number of work orders dropped drastically, and the company’s business performance was on the verge of a tailspin.

The company tried to put out the flames by announcing to the public that my husband had left the company.

“I’m really sorry I hit you……ah…I’m such an asshole…….I refused to leave the company so I could feed you guys…then the director gave me a job to do, like sorting garbage….and I…”

My husband refused to leave the company at one point.

Under Japanese law, it is not easy to fire a full-time employee.

When his boss advised him to leave the company voluntarily, my husband tried to stay at the company in defiance of the boss’s order.

However, the company’s upper management did not allow him to do so.

In order to get him out of the company, his boss assigned him the job of sorting garbage under terrible conditions.

“It’s a small warehouse with no air-conditioning,……and there was scrap wood and rusty heavy machinery,……and there were piles of raw garbage from the headquarters..rats were everywhere…I had to sort through all of the garbage. I get goosebumps just remembering it…..I’m sorry…I couldn’t imagine working in that environment…”

My husband, who had always worked indoors as a white-collar worker in front of a computer, apparently found working under sanitary conditions where rats were present physiologically unacceptable.

My husband eventually gave in to the company’s treatment and submitted his resignation that day.

“It’s over……what am I supposed to do now…”

My husband said that because of the latest scandal, he would no longer be able to work for another company in the same industry.

If he could start working again, it would be in a completely different industry, but his past knowledge would be completely useless there, and he could not expect to be treated as well as he had been.

My husband lamented that it was doubtful he would even be hired at his age.

“Ah…what are we going to do now…..”

Even if we could make ends meet on unemployment insurance, it would only be for a few months.

When that runs out, we won’t be able to pay the mortgage on our house and car, and our family will quickly be eaten up.

Our family life, which had been going so well, had hit rock bottom and we were now in the dark.

“This is the end…everything is over…”

From that day on, my husband became addicted to alcohol.

He didn’t look for a new job, and he started drinking at home every day in despair.

“Dear…”

I was too afraid that he would beat me again, so I could not say anything to him.

Our savings account balance was dwindling day by day, partly due to my husband’s alcohol expenses.

“Ah….how could this happen…..”

Everything was going well, and my normal life before the incident seemed like a long time ago.

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