Chapter 7: Secrets.

I wasn't allowed to enter their room. Her room. I did it challenging her authority, without much awareness, fear or regard of the consequences.

In fact, I was so untroubled by my trespassing that I didn't even realize when Satsuki came back into the house.

And she took me by surprise, she caught me red-handed.

There is something that escapes me. I know, without a doubt, that my emotional state went from calm to trauma. Yet I feel as if the real deal happened before Satsuki stomped into the room.

Can't exactly remember. I've tried revisiting the moment several times, and when I do, my soul feels heavy —I have trouble breathing, and I want to cry.

What I know is that it was related to Ted, and I know that I did read it from a book. I think it was Ted's diary. Satsuki didn't have a diary that I knew of, her textual presence reduced to the stupid inspirational post-its that she put over the mural on the wall opposite to their bed. Near the diary.

That mural was already there when they bought the house. It was a bicolor painting that could pass off as a wallpaper —if only a few seconds, for an untrained eye. It was superficially floral, but mysterious... as if it hid many layers of meaning. At least, for a child in a forbidden zone.

They didn't know who painted it, and kept it because of Ted's insistence in doing so. To want such a thing was an unusual behavior in Ted, so Satsuki didn't challenge it. In a way, it was Ted's wall —the rest of the bedroom, the rest of the house being Satsuki's.

Then, handwritten post-its started populating Ted's mural, invading that space. Some motivational, others simply organizational.

• “You need to go after what you want.”
• “Push yourself because no one is going to do it for you.”
• “Expect nothing and you will thank yourself for fighting.”
• “Daily: talk to three friends.”

And crap like that.

Crap that didn’t make her a good person.

Crap that made me think less of her. Couldn't avoid it.

Crap like that didn't stop her from overreacting when she saw me in the room. She felt that her privacy had been violated... by her daughter. Interestingly so, I had not given her post-its more than a five second look. I had been traumatized by something else. Who would be interested in that load of mindless mantras of uncritical self-reassurance?

It was the book, the diary that I had only been able to quickly skim through, the one that hid the secrets that I needed to unveil.