Page 9 of Deranged Imposter

She mopes. “That’s too much.”

An ounce of her naivety comes at the cost of wilted ends on my patience, meaning I get greedy too hastily. Assertive orders are often veiled as well-meaning requests, believing I have her best in mind, which I do.

She shouldn’t walk back to our home alone. Bad people know she’s associated with me, and heaven forbid awful things happen because she chose not to listen.

She has to meet me at the law building at least once a day. It selfishly puts my mind at ease to know an estimate of her day when I have classes too.

Sticky mochi, especially matcha-flavored, is forever banned from her tongue. A chunk of glutinous dough got stuck in her throat and turned her face red, with drool escaping her parted lips from coughing. She thinks she’s so clever to eat them when I’m not looking, but she’s awful at keeping secrets.

“Too much” is her trying to override my rules.

“You haven’t experienced how smothering I can be,” I hiss shrewdly on her neck, chuckling as she trembles in my arm. “It runs in the family.”

And there’s something more unstable and despicable about how my lips stretch to a manic grin at each fevered palpitate of her pulse.

“Have I ever been unkind to you?” I ask, thinking back to my mother’s words.

Listening closely, her heartbeat is a lullaby as tension snaps under my suit like a rubber band. Staying here for the night seems to be the right choice, but as my vacant eyes calmly skim the photo’s patterned corners, cynical triumph and tapered empathy slumber in the pit of my stomach.

Try harder. Be better. Don’t let her see. My weight topples over her, the bed catching us as she groans before rubbing my back soothingly.

This house stashes memories during a time of abysmal resentment and fatal sin. I don’t return to this place often. Seeing a series of negative emotions in my mother’s eyes singes something akin to but not wholly red hatred into my corneas.

“That sounds like a loaded question,” Isa mumbles and laughs under her breath.

But she presses her smaller hand onto my back, sensing my cold silence as she shudders with a sigh before speaking. A flash of temporary distress, a smudge of enmity, and some impulsive intensity assimilated into a knife idling on my tongue.

“Trauma-bonding,”a doctor said.

“Loneliness and fear of abandonment,”another had revised.

“He needs time,”one more amended.

I’m fine. I feel great. I have Isa, and she promised to never leave me.

They don’t know what they’re talking about with their purchased certificates on wounded children. I’m not broken; what was always imperfect - maybe never existed - can’t be fixed. It hasn’t stopped me from ripping pieces from Isa to fill the void.

Selfish, I know, but we’ll be fine together as a team. Just us, Isa and Mikah, in a prison made with everything I have and all she can offer.

After a long time of pondering, Isa finally says, “Sometimes you can be….”

“Controlling?” I offer her leeway, and in all fairness, it’s not much.

She giggles, bubbly and carefree. It’s a reassuring sound compared to the often-desired numbness of silence. A smile spreads on my face as I abandon her neck to hover above.

I fuse her delicate features into my memories as if it’s the last time, tracing the pretty curves and soft slopes that grasp my heart. When she meets my eyes with trust and tenderness, my heartbeats turn violent.

“Maybe ten percent of the impression,” she jokes, gifting me a cheekily brilliant smile.

Just a few more weeks, I think with hostile frustration,I’ll have her soon.

“Ready to go home?” She tilts her head and warms my cold cheek with her palm.

“Always,” I whisper with doubt between certainty.

Perhaps I don’t understand where “home” is, either.

Chapter Three

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