Chapter 3

***Onni-san washes Sachi's hair, and they talk her scars and her lack of fear.***

## Summary

Onii-san is giving Sachi a shower. He can now see her numerous scars. He says he'd like Sachi to wash her own hair, but she says shampoo scares her, since she hardly ever used it.

    But he is confused. If she's been so badly abused, why isn't she afraid of him touching her? It seems like she'd be terrified. He decides he wants to test her reaction to a fearful situation by picking up a straight razor, pointing it at her and asking her if it scares her. She just looks at him with a smile, totally not phased by the gesture. She even asks why it should scare her, to which Mister says 'no reason'.

He then realizes that maybe her sense of fear has been paralyzed because of all of the abuse.

Sachi confirms his thoughts by telling him that her father once hit her in the head with a bottle, which she thinks messed up her senses. Ever since then she's felt less pain and less fear, until eventually all of the pain and emotions she was having seemed to be happening to someone else.

    Onii-san asks her if she lied about being afraid of the shampoo and she says she did. She wanted him to wash her because she wanted to see all of her scars and see how he would react to them, since everyone at her school who's seen them thought they were creepy and bullied her about it. He tells her that he didn't think anything when he saw them, but he wants her to take better care of herself. He tells her to run from anything that seems dangerous, and ask for help if she gets hurt. He tells her that as her fiancee he wants to protect her. She says "thank you" and he leaves her to finish showering alone.

He thinks about how scary it was to see her smile at him even when he pointed a razor at her. As if she'd smile even in the face of death. But how much of that smile was genuine? But he feels that he cannot criticize her, since he hasn't even told her how he truly feels about her.

Soon after her bath, Sachi gets a hair cut from Onni-san. He asks her why no one at school said anything about all of her bruise. She replies that everyone at school knew she was being abused at home and bullied at school. But if the school reported the abuse at home then the bullying at school would come to light. Likewise, if her parents reported the bullying at school, the abuse at home would be exposed. So everybody ignored the problem to save themselves.

    Hearing this reminds him of a conversation he had when he was a child talking to an older man who claimed to have raised him. The man said 'no matter how successful or unsuccessful a person is, no one can survive alone.' It makes him wonder if she's only clinging to him because she does not want to be alone. But when he asks her, she says that she's staying with him because she wants to. He saved her.

He thinks to himself that even though she could leave and probably find sympathy and help because of her ordeal, she's going to stay with him because he was the first person to reach out to her. But he realizes that he needs her just as much as she needs him. He now understands what that man tried to tell him as a child.

"You cannot make it on your own."

## Image Gallery

The mystery man who helped raise Onii-san.Sachi's scars.Onii-san washes Sachi's hair.

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