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Eighteen is a bad year. To Reigen, eighteen remains to be the exact age he was when his father, rather absently, pointed out that his life was fucked.
“Come on, Arataka.” Without looking up from his paperwork, his father directs his voice at Reigen, who’s across the counter at the sink washing dishes. “You have the worst luck. Nothing ever goes your way.”
Reigen pauses. His rolled-up shirt sleeves are drenched, and the sponge in his hand is coated in sticky charred grime. It’s been a while since he decided that cleaning gloves hinder his ability to scrub deep into the corners of the dishes he cleans, though at the cost of his soft hands. He will regret this when he’s twenty-eight and lotion can’t save him.
The words from fifty seconds ago loop back.
You’re fucked. You know that, right?
Reigen’s words are soft, a knife severing deer flesh from the bone. “That’s not true.” He resumes scrubbing, the yellow sponge a slowed brushstroke in his hands - it’s an especially charred skillet. Delayed aching sensations run through his wrists, and his father doesn’t look up, his face a shadow swallowed by the downwards drag of the evening sky. “I made top marks this year. I’m going to the university I wanted.”
A beat. “I’m fine.”
The words are drawn across Reigen’s tongue carefully, steadily, each letter clanking past his teeth. They’re more accustomed to holding cigarettes between them than the truth. Lying has always felt easier.
A pen clicks shut. Gingerly, Reigen’s father sets his pen down, not letting it make a sound as he brings his arms up to rest on the granite surface in a thoughtful templed placement.
“Arataka,” he says, deceptively pleasant, and Reigen does not look up again. Dish soap seeps into the exposed pads of his fingers.
His father’s voice lowers, almost comically. “Your marks don’t matter. You’d have to be stupid to fail out of high school. Right now, at the beginning of your adult life, is where one’s maturity shines. You’ve failed to show me anything of the sort.”
The skillet feels slick in Reigen’s grip, and he tightens his grasp on the handle the same way he’s seen fishermen hold fish’s tails in place. Level it. Remain firm. Keep your thumb in. Press it into the body, until it can’t move.
The skillet melts into searing scales that heat against his trembling fingers.
The pen clicks open. His father's voice is precise and sharp. “You won’t make it out there. It’s clear to me. I know this - " a quiet scoff, a derisive little thing, escapes as he rises to leave " - but most importantly, you do, too.”
A crescent moon rests over his father’s shoulder through the high windows, and suddenly, the three studio lights hanging overhead in the kitchen feel too hot against Reigen’s neck.
For a second, he wants to give in to that weaning weakness to snap back. Natural instinct, after all, is as hard to fight back as hunger if you’re willing to separate the two at all.
But Reigen knows better. He bites his tongue, counts to three, and nods.
The darkness of the skillet glints against his nails like onyx. Silence follows the muffled sound of a sponge against metal before he hears a barstool creak against tiles, followed by heavy footfalls fading down the hall.
His fingers started bleeding that night.
A week passes before Reigen realizes that if he gestures with them quickly enough, he can’t see where skin splits from the flesh.