Death isn't Fair and Neither is Love

It was an another boring day, indistinguishable from the day before and the day after, when Lee had discovered the scroll under the floorboards of his mother's room.

It had been his father's funeral the day prior, and he had never really held any connection to the man. It was hard to form a meaningful bond with somebody who spent their entire days away from you, leaving before you woke up every morning, and arriving home after you fell asleep.

When he was a teenager, too young to be considered a man, and thus, unworthy of his father's presence, he had already decided that he would forgo any kind of proper relationship with his father. If the man did not care enough about him to make an effort, he would not as well. It did not matter.

He did not matter.

He had tried to reach out and his efforts were not reciprocated, shunned.

It did not matter.

He was dead now.

His mother's room was the only place he could hide from his invasive family. Like hornets, they had converged on their home as if it was a particularly good smelling flower, as they always did when there was some kind of sad event. They always came with cheap snacks, wearing sad painted faces, and always to gossip straight after.

They had rooted themselves in his sister's and his own room, the small space shared between them with two identical separate cloths laid out on the floor as beds with a single chest at the end of the room, opposite the door, to store their clothing. There was barely enough space for them to walk without stepping on the fabric, if it did not spend the day rolled up.

His sister was lucky she was youngest, with extra fabric to lie down on.

His mother's room was now stripped bare with the absence of his father.

This tiny square with a bed, luckily with a wooden frame, tucked into the right side, taking up the entire length of the wall, and a chest of clothing on the other side, directly opposite was all that made up the room. All personal affects taken and moved to the fledgling family shrine that been constructed in the main room the day before, with the urn of ashes, and a funerary stone set up in a small wooden rectangle frame.

Lee was certain that the contents of the shrine wouldn't even be touched on in conversation, yet his missing presence would take its place as a key topic of discussion. After all, he was the man of the house now. It was his responsibility to make sure that his mother was well fed. She possibly couldn't go out and get herself a job. It simply wasn't done.

If he was with them in the main room, they would most certainly complain that his father's small plot of land was being left unattended at the moment, because he was wasting time with them, but if he was out in the fields, they would still talk about how he ought to be present to look after his mother, a woman who was fully capable of looking after herself, and that somebody needed to fetch him from the fields to talk to her.

It was much easier for him to make to grieve alone, in a room by himself, still somewhat close to his mother, but still far away enough that his presence would still be reminiscent of his father's mostly absent and blank demeanour.

No, she was apparently incapable of weaving for anyone else but her family. It wouldn't be proper for his mother to show off her skills to the rest of the village, and disparage any of the other women from improving their sewing. No, it just wouldn't be right for her, now that the breadwinner was dead, and she had two underage children to feed.

Lee's sister was probably sitting perfectly proper and prim with the guests, in the main room, making excuses for his behaviour, how he was mourning his father away somewhere else, mourning their supposed special relationship.

His sister was the ideal for what the women here strived to be, but all Lee could really see was the little tree monkey she was a decade prior, climbing up branches faster than the wind, and smashing peanuts down on hard rocks to crack open their shells.

Now she was probably sitting there, in front of a jeering, mocking crowd, dressed in pristine white, miraculously kept clean compared to his now slightly grey robes, with her hands folded neatly in her lap with a sad smile on her face, her fiancé sitting across from her, gently smiling to provide support.

The boy was too effortlessly kind, tragically handsome and was so supportive of his little sister's more adventurous side, that he had commissioned special, darker robes for her to wear whenever she felt as if she needed to take a particularly adventurous forest romp, and return home after swinging over the rivers, throwing herself from tree to tree, and skidding through the muddy straights.

They were perfect for each other, and looked perfect together. The boy had glossy, long black locks as straight as an arrow and his eyes were the most perfect shade of almond, so different from his own muddy hair, which never straightened out, never ironed itself out, no matter what he did, and didn't seem to have some charming sheen his sister's hair had, despite being the same shade.

Seeing that stupid boy with his sister made him flush red. He had his fingers wrapped around her wrist, faintly stroking her skin, and Lee felt such a roiling, all consuming pit form in his stomach that he had to leave.

The image of the two hugging and kissing, in his mind, was too much for him to handle, and he felt as if his heart was going to burst. He clutched his hand to his chest and keeled over, suppressing the wail that wanted to throw itself from his chest, and erupt into the world.

It wasn't fair.

It just wasn't fair.

Tears welled up in his eyes, and chokes threatened to escape the confines of his throat. He thrust his hands over his mouth, pinching his lips between his fingers as if they could seal the sound in, his sadness in.

It was all useless and he punched the floorboards with his fist, completely falling over and hitting the bedframe when his hand went straight through, forming a hole in the floor.

His entire arm up to his elbow had sunk through the bottom of his house, and this was his mother's room. She was going to kill him!

There was nothing for him now!

Oh well, he guessed that it was probably better than suffering through the now raw, open rift in his chest.

And the shattered pieces of his heart...

Lee, now secure in the knowledge that he had nothing else left to lose, began to rummage around in the new cavernous space that he had accidently opened for himself. When he reached down to the bottom, there was only smooth rock, as if the surface had been specifically chosen and sanded down, the perfect surface if somebody wanted to store something.

The thought of his parents using his space to store hidden objects away from their children flashed through his mind, and he wondered briefly if he should stop before he reached anything he might regret and want to forget.

He congratulated himself on his poetry before continuing to feel around the rock's smooth surface. There was nothing in the immediate vicinity, and so Lee began to shuffle the rest of his body to lie properly on his side, to reach out further, deciding to move towards the right, arbitrarily.

His fingers brushed something lightly.

He reached out again, and felt the faintest dry texture of paper. He craned further into the small hole, his entire lanky, thin arm underground, his shoulders too large to fit through the hole he had made. He flapped his hand, somewhat uselessly, to reach the paper, and stroked it, as soon as he could get a firm sense of its location.

He closed his eyes and felt that it was a rolled up scroll, and used two fingers to role it towards him, hoping that it was on the fancier side and that it had a wooden support inside, instead of being just paper.

He thought to himself that if the scroll as just paper, to keep its shape, a ribbon must have been put around it, not too dissimilar to the one in his hair that would fall out at least four times a day.

Lee rolled the scroll towards him, and when he could get a firm grasp at it, he picked it up and fed it through the hole in the floor towards the light. He turned it over several times in his hand, resisting the urge to unfurl it, before shoving it up into his sleeve, for safe keeping.

He looked down into the hole he made, and dragged the bed over to cover his handiwork, throwing down a small piece of cloth for good measure, just in case. If his mother asked why he had moved the bed, slightly forwards and away from the wall, he would simply claim that he saw an insect come out from the wood.

The rice paper doors behind Lee rattled slightly as they were opened and his sister's fiancé came in to tell Lee that it was dinner time, and that he was required to eat with his family.

It was another boring day when Lee had found the scroll. Nothing of note had happened that day. Nothing at all important.

Other than the scroll.