A picture worth a thousand lies
The memory and the mirror
Nothing but what came before
Nothing but a closing door

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words
A thousand eyes

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

Corver the madness
Cover the fear
No one will ever
Know you were here

A figure in the hallway light
Returning like a ghost
Something that was left behind
Something in a child's mind

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words
A thousand eyes

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

Bury my lovely
Bury the lies
Bury me under
A thousand goodbyes

A shadow from another time
Is waiting in the night
Something happened long ago
Something that will not let go

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

----"Bury My Lovely" October Project

"Hidaka Yuji, weathly Niigata businessman, dies of a heart attack at age seventy." Omi reads aloud, focusing on the obituary section of the newspaper. "Ne, Ken-kun, any relation to you?"

The watering can falls from my fingers and clatters on the floor, splashing all over, soaking my shoes. I hardly notice. I'm staring at Omi as if I have never seen him before, something in me wonders if he's speaking some kind of different language, or if he's talking to someone else.

"Ken-kun?" Omi asks, face pinched in concern. Behind his shoulder, the others watch me closely. I must look very odd, since Aya isn't yelling at me for spilling the water. There is something trickling down my cheek, but I don't know where it came from. Surely it's not mine, right? Hidaka Yuji has nothing to do with me. I'm no one, a nanashi; someone who has no name...

"I...iya, Omi...." I force out, gritting my teeth in a smile. "I don't think I know him..."

I'm a rotten liar, always have been. And I can see that they don't believe me in the slightest. Fine, let them think what they want. I'll go hide while they decide what is the truth. Without a word, I walk slowly out of the shop. When I hit the stairs, I start running faster than I have ever have before. I have to get away. Otherwise they'll want to know.

My small, disasterously messy room welcomes me and I huddle on my bed, shaking. Why now? I haven't heard that name in years; I thought I had forgotten him and everyone else. Why did he have to die *now,* when people who I have to live with could find out? "Why?" I moan tearfully, my voice no longer mine, but one belonging to the battered, abandoned and betrayed little boy Hidaka Yuji never acknowledged.

I cry, alone in my room, where no one can hear. It's better that no one knows.

It's better no one knows the man in the paper was my father, a hard-nosed, emotionally vacant man who only saw what he chose. Sometimes, Aya frightens me; he seems so much like him. Maybe that's why I desperately want Aya to notice me. I tried so hard to get my father to just *see* me. My father was a big-shot businessman from Tokyo; he came from a wealthy samurai family, one of the few that managed to retain their power and influence after the fall of the Tokugawa shoguns. So he had old money coming out his ears. He retired at forty, moving to Niigata in order to ease the stress on his heart.

He met my mother there. She was a country girl who was just attractive enough to keep my father's attention through their first year of marriage. After the birth of my older brother, Shuhei, he basically stopped caring about her.

Since I look nothing like my mother, I am left to wonder if there are other reasons my father found me so repulsive.

Kids have an uncanny sense of balance; they can tell immediately when something is wrong in their little world. I always knew my father didn't like me. So I did everything I could think of to change that. It never worked, of course, but I never stopped trying.

My mother was my only refuge, since my father hated me. Shuhei didn't care too much for me either, not doubt because my father didn't. I was by myself a lot; left alone in the house with my mother. She had once been slim and lovely, but by the time I was four, she was a cherubic, comely, gentle-faced woman with sad, dark eyes and fine, lightly greying black hair. She was only thirty-five at the time, but fifteen years with my father had taken years from her. I remember how she always smiled, even it was fake. I loved my mother. Even now, I still miss her.

I never met any other members of my family, except for my uncle on my father's side. My uncle cared for me, but in a way that made me shudder. My father's younger brother took a particular shine to his nephews, but my father sheltered Shuhei. My mother couldn't protect me when my father turned a blind eye. My uncle began to show his "affection" when I was five.

After the first incident, I told my father. He told me that I was imagining things and to never speak of it again. After the second, third, fourth, fifth, tenth times, he said the same.

I understand now why he ignored it. It went beyond hatred of me. Shuhei had been accepted into an upscale boarding school in Kyoto. Shuhei was an idiot; he relied heavily on the family name and money to keep him enrolled. My father had paid to get him in, and they took him because the name brought them notice. Had they known the Hidaka family was hiding "morally questionable" activities behind its gleaming doors, Shuhei would have been ejected without a second thought. My father would have been disgraced.

Kids are smarter than people give them credit for; I respect them immensely for that. However, they can't understand politics. To them, a rope is a rope. So I didn't understand that I was supposed to keep quiet so that my brother could coast through three years of high school and so he could get a diploma he would never need to use because my father was so swamped with money. I kept insisting that what my uncle was doing to me was real. And it only got worse from there. A week after my sixth birthday, he raped me.

Again I ran to my father.

Again, he told me to stop lying.

I have always hoped that my mother believed me, but couldn't say anything because she was forbidden by my father to do so. I know she knew, because after my uncle left, she would clean me up, change my bedding, and then tuck me back into bed. It was all she could do, I suppose. My father had broken what little free will she had to begin with. I don't blame her in any way; she was as helpless as I.

Finally, when the bruises began appearing in places clothing couldn't hide, and I could no longer walk, my father acknowledged what my uncle was doing.

This time, he told me that I deserved it.

It took me a while, but I began to realize that I did deserve it. I must have been a constant irritation to my father, clamoring endlessly for his attention and love. I was a distraction; an unwanted burden. I was being punished for not accepting my situation as a good son should. I had expected too much from my father. Over the years, I have been able to come up with thousands of justifications for my uncle's behavior; thousands of things I did to deserve it. Did I really think my uncle *enjoyed* fucking a child? He had been an attractive man; he could have been doing that sort of thing with women his own age. Instead, he was forced to administer to me, since I had done something to make it necissary. My "punishment," as it quickly came to be called by my father and uncle, made me hurt and ashamed. But I could never manage to be good enough to make it stop.

My father decided to send me away. He told me that he couldn't put up with a child who didn't behave. Of course, I believed every word. I was being sent away because I had failed. I don't remember much about my house, but I do remember leaving it. I'd been given one bag with some underwear, pajamas and a toothbrush; they said I didn't need any clothes because I would be getting a uniform. They made me sit on my front step, crying, until the big black car arrived to take me away. I was shoved into the waiting arms of Brother Mark, who whisked me off to the monastery where I lived until high school. I was seven years old at the time.

I liked Brother Mark; at least, I think I did. I stayed by myself while at the monastery. I only had a few friends, including Kase. He was the one who introduced me to soccer. I became obsessed with the sport, it was something people told me I was good at, and I used it to fill my mind and memory. I used soccer and Kase to block out my childhood.

My life whirled by in a blur until high school. I never actually finished my first year; the J-League popped up and I grabbed for it, despite a nearly paralyzing fear of failing. I joined the soccer team and skyrocketed to the top, and the rest, as they say, is history. In and out in less than two years, all because I had never noticed my best friend's jealousy. Jealousy that I had caused. If I hadn't ignored Kase, or if I had done something differently, he wouldn't have let the wounded pride fester enough to make him want to try and kill me three times.

My life runs in a circle; I sometimes wonder how long it will be before I'm punished again. I know I will be, since it's just a matter of time before I do something that warrants it. I'm not complaining, I've brought it all on myself. Everything that has happened to me has been deserved. I hope the next punishment really is death, though. There's nothing else left. The first punishment cost my innocence. The second took my soul. All that's left is my life....

"Ken-kun? Are you all right?"

Omi. I'm sorry for making you worry. I should have been more careful. But for now, you should just leave me alone. You won't understand, but you're lucky that way.

"Oi, Kenken. Tell us what's up. Maybe we can help."

Yohji. Don't spend the effort on my part. I'm sorry I distracted you. Please go away. I don't want you telling me that it's not my fault. It always is. Somehow, I'm always responsible.

"Ken. Open the door."

Aya. Oh God, Aya, please don't use that voice. I'm sorry I made you angry, I didn't mean to. Please don't be mad at me.

I can hear something jiggling in the lock; Omi must have a paper clip or something, the kid is a genius the way he can do almost anything. I pull the blankets over my head. Maybe if I lie very still, they won't bother me. The knob is turning.

I was wrong. My next punishment will be to tell them what's wrong. I don't want them to know. I was content to forget. And when I couldn't forget, I could hide. It was always enough. I can see their shadows spill across my floor, lit from behind by the hallway light.

The punishment begins now. I briefly wonder what I did this time.....