Aunt Akiko’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession—shock, grief, and then something that looked almost like relief before she could hide it behind polite mourning.
“Oh, Leo.” She reached for my hands, her fingers warm despite the cold morning. “I’m so sorry. When? How?”
“I don’t know the details. His business associate called to let me know my presence would be ‘inappropriate’ for the service.” I laughed, but it sounded hollow and bitter even to my own ears.“Apparently, even in death, dear old dad can’t stand the sight of his genetic disappointment.”
Her grip on my hands tightened, and I saw anger flash in her eyes—quick and fierce before she could contain it behind the careful neutrality she’d learned from decades of living on the edges of yakuza society.
“That man,” she muttered, using a tone that suggested she had several choice words about my father’s character that she was too polite to share. “Even in death, he can’t—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together like she was physically restraining the words that wanted to escape.
“It’s fine,” I said, though we both knew it wasn’t. “I wouldn’t have known what to say at his grave anyway. ‘Thanks for the genetic disappointment, sorry I couldn’t be the alpha son you wanted, hope hell has good Wi-Fi so you can continue ignoring me from beyond the grave.’”
“Stop that.” Her voice was sharp, sharper than I’d ever heard it. “You are not a disappointment. You are not something to be ashamed of. Your father was a proud, foolish man who couldn’t see past his own expectations to value what he had.”
The words hit harder than they should have, cutting through years of careful emotional armor I’d built around the knowledge that I was unwanted. Aunt Akiko had never spoken against my father before, had maintained careful neutrality even when his decisions clearly hurt me.
“He wanted an alpha heir,” I said, my voice smaller than I intended. “Someone who could take over the family business, command respect, carry on his legacy. Instead, he got me—an omega who can’t even leave the house without embarrassing his precious reputation.”
“He got a son who is intelligent, compassionate, and stronger than he ever gave you credit for.” She squeezed my hands again,her voice gentle but firm. “Your secondary gender doesn’t define your worth, Leo. It never has.”
But it defines everything else,I thought but didn’t say. It defined why I was trapped in this cottage instead of living in the world. It defined why I’d never been to school, never made friends, never experienced any of the normal milestones that other people my age took for granted. It defined why my father had looked at me with such carefully controlled disappointment every time he’d been forced to acknowledge my existence.
“I just…” I struggled to find words for the hollow ache in my chest. “I thought maybe when he was dying, he might want to see me. Might want to say something, anything, before it was too late. Instead, I found out a week after the fact from his business associate.”
The tears came without warning, hot and shameful and completely beyond my control. I’d thought I was past crying over my father’s rejection, had convinced myself that his opinion stopped mattering years ago. But sitting in the kitchen where I’d spent my entire adult life waiting for him to decide I was worth visiting, the grief hit me like a physical blow.
Aunt Akiko made soft, soothing sounds and pulled me into a hug that smelled like the herbal soap she used and the lingering scent of pine from her walk through the forest. I let myself lean into her warmth, this woman who’d been more of a parent to me than my actual father had ever tried to be.
“I know it hurts,” she murmured, stroking my hair with gentle fingers. “But his inability to love you properly says nothing about your worth and everything about his limitations.”
“What if she was wrong, though?” The words spilled out before I could stop them, eight years of buried fears finally breaking free. “What if Mom could see what I became and she’s disappointed too? What if being an omega really does make me less than what she hoped for?”
Aunt Akiko pulled back to look at me, her eyes fierce with a protective anger I’d only seen once before, the day a local alpha had gotten too close to the cottage and made inappropriate comments about “the boy in the woods.”
“Your mother loved you exactly as you were,” she said firmly. “I remember how she used to talk about you, even when you were tiny. She said you were going to be something special. She never cared what your secondary gender would be.”
“She died before I presented,” I pointed out, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “Before she could see what I actually became.”
“She saw who you were going to be long before biology had anything to say about it.” Aunt Akiko’s voice was soft but certain. “You have her eyes, her gentle heart, her fierce spirit when you’re backed into a corner. You think she would have cared about anything else?”
I wanted to believe her, wanted to hold on to the image of my mother as someone who would have loved me regardless of the genetic lottery that had made me an omega in a world that valued alphas above all else. But the years of isolation, of being hidden away like a shameful secret, had worn down my ability to believe in unconditional love.
“I miss her,” I whispered, the admission feeling like it was being torn from somewhere deep in my chest. “I miss her so much, and I can barely remember her voice anymore. I have these fragments—her singing while she cooked, the way she used to read to me in English and Japanese, how she smelled like vanilla and green tea. But it’s not enough.”
“It’s more than you think,” Aunt Akiko said gently. “Those fragments are the most important parts of her, the parts that shaped who you became. She’s still with you, Leo. In your kindness, your strength, your refusal to let this isolation break your spirit.”
My spirit feels pretty broken right about now,I thought but didn’t say. Instead, I let Aunt Akiko hold me while I cried for the mother I’d lost too young and the father who’d never learned to love me, for the life I’d never gotten to live and the freedom I’d never tasted.
Outside, the pine trees swayed in the afternoon breeze, their branches casting shifting shadows across the cottage floor. Somewhere beyond the security fence, my father was being laid to rest without me, surrounded by the yakuza families who’d known him as a powerful leader rather than the man who’d locked away his only surviving son out of shame.
But here in this small kitchen, held by the woman who’d become my surrogate mother, I felt something I hadn’t expected—not relief exactly, but a strange sense of possibility. My father was gone, and with him went the constant weight of his disappointment, his expectations, his carefully controlled disgust at what I represented.
For the first time in my life, I was truly orphaned. And maybe, just maybe, that meant I was finally free to figure out who I was supposed to be when I wasn’t constantly measuring myself against someone else’s definition of worth.
“At least I’ll never have to disappoint him again,” I said, pulling back from Aunt Akiko’s embrace. “That’s something, right? Twenty-two years of being a genetic failure, and now I’m finally free to fail on my own terms.”
Aunt Akiko clicked her tongue disapprovingly, but her eyes were soft with understanding. “You are not a failure, Leo-kun. You are just… beginning.”
Beginning what?I wondered.A life as an omega hidden away in the mountains? A future of managing my monthly biological disasters while the world moves on without me? A thrilling career in talking to myself and reading the same books over and over again?
