. . .
Date: August, 1995
Location: New York, America
. . .
Li-Am hurriedly knocks on his daughter’s room.
“Lei?” he tried keeping his voice light and normal, he swears he does, but he couldn’t quite keep the panic out of him when he hears absolutely nothing for a moment from inside her room, “Lei-Lei? Are you in there? It’s Dad. Can you open the door for me please? I want to talk to you.”
There’s nothing but a faint, dripping noise.
Then, after a beat, the door slowly creaks open.
Feeling a bit apprehensive of what he is bound to see, Li-Am slowly makes his way in, clutching the med kit on his other hand close to him so tight his knuckle has gone white.
He doesn’t know what he’ll see.
What he will find out–
…But to his relief, it was only Leigh Anne who was leaning by her desk, half-standing and half-sitting on it in a lax manner as she looks out the window, watching the sun set, the same way he had seen her do on the first night he got her back home.
Her arms are loosely crossed over an oversized hoodie that looked so ridiculously big on her, no thanks to the weight she had lost.
She looks like a statue, a still doll.
And it kind of scared him.
“Lei-Lei? Are you okay?” Li-Am quietly takes a step closer, suddenly feeling very, very nervous, “Renée seriously spooked me when she called me. Did something happen?”
When his daughter slowly turns to look at him in the eye, Li-Am forces himself to stay very still, tells himself not to flinch because there it was again, that odd blue tinted within his daughter’s warm brown eyes again.
There was a flash of darkness, something old and dangerous just lurking underneath the layers of a gaze that was something else… something that isn’t entirely Leigh Anne Song.
And it never will be.
The moment comes and passes.
“Huh? Dad…?”
Leigh Anne looked visibly startled as she immediately uncrosses her arms, looking like she was just dreaming but was rudely awakened from a much-needed sleep.
Li-Am didn’t really know what to make of such a strange reaction as his gaze had already shifted on the floor. He distantly feels his jaw clenching almost instantly in a sudden bid not to scream, he seriously didn’t want to rattle the kid now she was so obviously out of it but–
There’s blood on the floor.
…Why is there blood on the floor?
There was so much of it dripping and coating one of her sleeves, crimson droplets already sliding down from one of Leigh Anne’s skinny wrists, the other still loosely holding on to a pair of bloody scissors, dripping and splashing red all over on to the floor.
And it was such a stark, angry red, so vividly red amidst the pale floor, gleaming so brightly and blending in almost seamlessly amidst the colors of the setting sun.
Li-Am didn’t say anything (couldn’t bring himself to) as he gently eases the scissors off of his daughter’s slackened hold before placing it somewhere she couldn’t reach as he silently checked her over for any other injuries he may have missed.
There are multiple gashes on her left forearm and down to her wrists, made with scissors but nothing too dangerous that could actually lead to blood loss, nothing that could actually kill her.
But he knows it must have hurt.
It was all done as a means of self-harm.
“Let’s get your arm washed so I can bandage it up for you real quick, okay?” Leigh Anne wasn’t even looking at him, “Lei-Lei…? Leigh Anne, are you listening to me?”
She blinks at his unusually severe tone–most likely sensing the twinge of fear, the rising hysteria in his voice–but she was moving slowly, so slowly, as if she was groggy, on the verge of waking up, as if his daughter was still trapped in a dream, as if she still couldn’t understand what got her father so worked up for a moment or two…
“Yes,” she mumbled, “Yes, father.”
Absurdly, Li-Am suddenly wants to scream, wants to rage there and then. He wants to grab Leigh Anne by the shoulders and shake her until she comes back to her senses and sees what just happened, what she had done to herself. He wants a reaction that he knows was truly his little girl’s and not… not this still-doll, not something that wasn’t even her. Li-Am can’t… he just can’t take anymore of this!
No father could ever stand seeing their child like this.
Li-Am is so weary and sick of feeling like he was treading all over a landmine. He’s tired. And–and this situation. It’s not… it’s not sustainable.
Is his daughter seriously losing it?
Or was it him?