A Day in the Life of Shinji (Work Thread) (Done)::

Shinji sighed as he walked out of his parent's house.
His father was in one of his depressed moods again, which Shinji honestly thought was stupid.
As he walked back to his own apartment, he thought back to what had transpired, gritting his teeth at the memory...


Flashback:

It was in the dining room of the Kagemaru family house, and with that man having gone out shopping, it was just him and mother.
Which is why he decided it was the perfect timing to make something clear to her.
He couldn't remember just how exactly it had gotten so bad, but he did remember the point where she started to cry.

"Why do you stay around him?! He's got the mindset of a man child, deluded into thinking he's talented when that's only because most of the people that read his works are total idiots, and when things don't go his way, he becomes a spoiled brat! I could go on and on as to what I think is wrong with him. But it'd be pointless because YOU don't do anything about it! You say you want to support him through all this, yet all you are is an enabler for his bad traits! Not that he even has any good traits..." He yelled in an angry, reproachful tone at his mother, who was on the verge of tears by this point.

"Shinjiro, please. You don't know what your father went through to get here. He-"

"Oh enough with that speech! So he has a tragic past! Big fat f*cking deal! That doesn't excuse him for being the low-form being that he is! I respect you, mother, you deserve your place here in the top ward. But that man? He belongs in the slums with some cheap whore of a wife, not you! You're better than him!" Shinjiro interrupted her.

"Shinjiro, I love your father, and-"

"Right, right. You love him, and he loves you. But is that really love? Or is that just codependence? I take a look at the shame that is his so-called 'magnum opus', which is one of the few things I agree with him on in that it's horrible, and I know that he's got a completely warped definition of love, and I don't even understand what love is!
I'd rather have no idea at all than have some incorrect definition of something! I mean look at it, from the way he writes it, it makes it sound like that you were loved by him specifically because he loved the things no one else does, and that he fell in love with you for your personality and encouragement for him. Which to me is that he only fell in love with you because you made him feel better and that he did it to satisfy his own ego yet he denies that being the case! I cannot respect that in any sort of willing circumstances!" Shinjiro snapped back.

"Is that why you didn't want me to take those courses in psychology and sociology even though that's what I wanted to go into? Because you didn't want me to have the academic qualifications to prove i'm right right now and you're in denial of that fact? I wanted to be a psychologist and write academic papers! I didn't go for any of that because you wanted me to try and be like that man!" He roared angrily, slamming his fist on the table.

By this point, his mother was completely in tears.
"Please, Shinjiro, stop...." she said in between sobs as she covered her face with her hands.

"No. I'm not going to, because i'm not done yet, and you need to hear this! I did what you asked, not because I respected that man, but because I care about you, mother! I decided out of some corner of my heart at the time to listen to you, decide you knew what was best. Well, I was young and naive then, and I regret listening to that every time I see his pitiful face! Maybe if I had those degrees, you'd be taking me seriously!"

"Shinji, please, he raised you with me. I do take you seriously. Don't you feel any kind of-" she began to say before once again, Shinjiro cruelly cut her off.

"Feel any sort of familial love for him? Please. Just because he's my parent does not mean i'm obligated to love him. Don't ignore it. You're both living emotional crutches for each other's problems in a give-and-take relationship that you just slap on the label of love onto! That's not healthy for either of you, and that is certainly not what love is!" He said.

"Shut up Shinjiro!" His mother finally roared with tears of rage in her eyes in the sort of voice that could only be described as being filled with hatred.

"You keep saying you respect me, yet you keep on needling me like this! If you respected me, then you also wouldn't insult your father because you know how much I love you and him! How can you keep calm while saying such...such horrible things?!" She yelled.

By this point, his mother couldn't even respond coherently from this point on, instead crying face down on the table.
Shinji could respond to that, but when he saw by this point just how far he had pushed his mother emotionally, he ceased.
No matter how much he yelled, she usually ended up ignoring him, making all of this work for naught.



"... Very well. I'll be going now, mother. Please. I'm begging you, make the right choice. Goodbye." he said as he walked out without any reply from his mother.


He sighed as he walked into the apartment and thought about her words as he sat down on the comfy couch he had.
Try as he might, he couldn't deny that he had some happy memories of him and that man.
Back when he had made the mistake of respecting him, the two had gotten along actually pretty well.
Now those memories were soured by the passage of time in his mind. Symbols of his youthful folly.

So why was it that there were tears in his eyes?
"Why... why do I feel like crying...? I was right... wasn't I...?" he muttered to himself.

In a rare moment of weakness for him, something about today had drained him more than usual. It was the first time in a long while that he had gone down this hard on his mother for what he had thought was correct...
As such, he did something that almost anyone who knew Shinji would have said was impossible.
He cried.

Though he did not fully understand why he was doing so, he cried anyways.
Because deep down, no matter how much he tried to deny it...
He really did love his father, deep down.

So eventually, he dried his tears, and began to write once more...
All the while fiddling with the money his mother had left for him in a sealed envelope on the table that he had taken on his way out.
FIN~