Chapter 445. A Father and Some Stupid Horses: Chatting with a Father in the Bathroom. (1/2)

“Ran...” When the two hysterical girls were all laughed out, Rosa called out my name.

“You awake?” She continued.

“Do you think he seriously fell asleep like this?” Dawn questioned curiously.

“I’m awake. Strangely enough, it’s unexpectedly relaxing in here.”

I sat up and stretched my arms out. This little soak had done wonders. Who knew it’d be so relaxing? I really had to thank that stupid horse for throwing me in here.

“Jeez, you’re such a weirdo. You’re always finding the strangest things relaxing.”

“Shouldn’t we head inside and dry off now,” Dawn cut in and suggested.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

“I’ll meet you inside. I’ve got to bring the horses back to the stable.” 

“Sure. See you there.” Rosa agreed as Dawn hopped up to her feet and led the four horses in the general vicinity back to the stable.

When we made it to the house, the door was unlocked. We took off our shoes inside at the front entrance and Rosa suddenly asked, “What do we do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, our shoes are soaked, we can’t exactly throw them in the dryer. It’ll take hours for them to dry.”

“So?”

“Weren’t we going to head to the city later? It’ll be pretty late by the time they dry.”

The front door opened up and Dawn stepped inside right as we started discussing what to do.

“There’s not much we can really do about that, right?”

“Uh, it might be boring… but if you’re fine with it… how about… both of you spend the night here?” Dawn, who'd overheard what we were talking about upon entering, awkwardly made that offer to us while she nervously fidgeted with her fingers.

“What do you think?” Rosa sought my input.

“I’m fine with it. Personally, I’d rather spend more time outside the city than inside it.”

“Really?” Dawn asked excitedly.

“Yeah. What about you, Rosa?”

“Hmmm… I do like it out here. It’s been pretty fun. Sure, why not?”

“In that case, how about staying until the end of your trip! You can head to the city during the day and come back here at night… though... it’d be about an hour and a half long drive… which would probably be… really inconvenient now that I think about it.” When she realized the big downside to her offer she started to trail off and get quieter toward the end.

Rosa looked my way and left the decision up to me. Dawn also switched her focus over to me. 

I shrugged and said, “I don’t mind the drive. Besides, it's not like we have to go to and from the city every day that we’re here. The city was never our main destination anyway. We came for a scenic view and we only really need one day to go and see it.”

“Then, you’ll stay?”

“If you don’t mind us taking up space here.”

“That’s not a problem at all. The one thing we have plenty of is space.”

“Then this works out perfectly. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next week.”

“Yeah.” An overjoyed smile crept onto Dawn’s face. It seemed up until now she hadn’t realized she’d been naturally smiling more and more in front of us.

Neither of us pointed it out to her. We had an unspoken mutual understanding to keep quiet about it to avoid making her grow self-conscious over it.

Once we’d locked in a place to stay for the week, Dawn led me to the washroom and I took a nice long shower while the two girls changed and dried off in Dawn’s room.

Their washroom was pretty big and their shower was separate from the bathtub. While bombarded by the flow of hot water, the door to the washroom opened up. When I looked over, I realized it was Dawn’s father. 

“Huh? What’re yuh doin in here, kid?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Haha, right. A shower.”

“What about you? Don’t you have a farm to look after?”

“It’s rare for my daughter to have friends over. The farm can wait a day.”

“Wait, did you think I was your daughter? What the hell? Do you bathe together with your daughter?”

“Of course not, yuh idiot. Don’t go around saying weird things. I was just about to jump in the tub to take a relaxing bath when I heard my phone go off. I left to take the call and came back only to find some punk slipped inside the shower while I was gone.”

I looked over to the bathtub and only now realized it actually was full of water.

“Uh… sorry about that. I’ll leave now then.”

“Nah, it’s fine, just stay there and take your shower. I could use someone to talk to. Yuh don’t get many people to talk to around here. We can continue our chat from earlier while we’re here.”

“If you say so.”

Dawn’s father removed his towel from around his waist and slung it over the towel holder on the wall on his side before he stepped inside the tub of water. He slid down the wall until he was fully submerged in the water.

“...”

“...”

There was an awkward break in our conversation. I didn’t really know exactly what to say. Showering next to another dude soaking in a tub definitely wasn’t something I was accustomed to.

“Hey-” “Kid-“

The two of us spoke up at the same time and cut each other off.

“What is it?” I asked.

“No, go ahead if you were going to say something.”

“I didn’t really have anything to say. The awkward silence was a bit too much.”

“In that case, let me ask you something.”

“What?”

“Kid, what do yuh think of my daughter?”

“Huh? You mean... Dawn? What I think of her?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s an airhead I guess.”

“Not that. I mean what yuh think of her as a member of the opposite sex.”

“I’ve already got a girlfriend.”

“I get that, but let’s say yuh didn’t have a girlfriend. Do you think you’d be interested in her?”

“That’s a very precarious question to ask me.”

“What? Does yer girlfriend have yuh so whipped yuh can’t even look or speak about another girl?”

Quite the opposite actually. She’s too open to the point it’s troubling.

“I do think Dawn is attractive. Why do you ask though?”

“Just outta curiosity. Don’t worry, whatever’s said in here stays in here. It’s just some guy talk.”

“You say it’s just out of curiosity? I doubt that. What’s the real reason?”

“Haaaaah… I need that girl to grow attached to someone. More attached to them than to me. So attached that she’ll be able to finally leave her nest.”

“You want to kick your daughter out?”

“No. Nothin of the sort. She’s free to come and go any time. She can stay here all she wants. But… I want her to go out there and see everything that the world has to offer. What’s beyond just this tiny little farm. There’s so much out there for her to see. I don’t want her to waste her time chained down to this farm and grow old losing out on her precious youth because she feels indebted to me.”

“That girl… she thinks I can’t tell that I’m part of the reason isn’t able to take that first step to leave the nest.”

“You’re part of the reason?”

“Yeah. It’s because she’s overly concerned about me. She’s worried I’ll be lonely if she leaves. She doesn’t want me to feel like she’s leaving me all alone the same way Aurelia left me. She’s always worried about my health and trying to avoid letting me do anything that could negatively impact my health. That foolish girl… she’s too filial. It’s to the point she’ll sacrifice her own happiness to support me. It pains my heart to see it.”

“You feel guilty?”

“Yes, extremely so. My daughter means the world to me. I just want to see her happy. I don’t want her to end up all alone in old age like her weak failure of a father who couldn’t keep the woman he loved.”

“Don't you have any other family?”

“It’s just me and my daughter now. After I took over the farm from my parents... everyone else in the family moved to the city.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“...” his expression darkened and turned glum. Something about his reaction felt… off. I wasn’t quite sure what it was though.

“Aside from you taking over the farm from your parents, did something else happen in the past that made them move to the city?”

“...”

“As you said, what’s said in this room stays in this room. If it’s something you don’t want Dawn to find out about, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Yer… pretty perceptive… for a kid.”

“Well? Care to get it off your chest? I don’t mind listening.”

“Haaaaaaaah…” Dawn’s father let out a long sigh. His mouth sunk below the water as he continued to exhale out bubbles.

“...”

After a short while collecting his thoughts in silence he raised his head out of the water and said, “Back then… after I brought Aurelia back to the farm… a lot of disasters started to strike one after another.”

“What type of disasters exactly?”

“It started off small. At first, it was just a few feral hogs destroying some of our crops. Didn’t think anything strange of it at the time since they were pretty common back then though.”

“After that an infestation of locusts appeared, eating up a large portion of our crops.”

“Next was a plague. Two different diseases wiped out two of the crops we were growing all in one go. Nothing we did worked to stop or counteract it. When it looked like things were getting better with the things we tried, it would just keep coming back and we had no idea why.”

“Later we discovered our groundwater had been contaminated. The nutrients in our soil were also all out of whack and we had no idea why.”

“But the problems didn’t end there. We started encountering problems with suppliers. They were jacking up prices at first, outright scalping, but eventually, they stopped supplying us with goods altogether.”

“With everything going wrong since the moment Aurelia came to the farm, my family started to cast all the blame onto her. I defended her with everything I had… but the cost was them growing fed up with me, packing up their belongings, and... moving to the city…”

“Aurelia was overcome with guilt from not only all the disasters she felt she was responsible for, but also me choosing to defend and picking her over my family, forming a rift between me and them. Convinced she’d brought nothing but bad luck with her, she suggested we just sell the farm and buy up some land somewhere else to try and start over anew, but I stubbornly refused at the time. I didn’t want to sell the legacy my parents entrusted to me.”

“Unable to take it any longer, Aurelia, thinking it for the better, left on her own and returned to the city. She left behind a single note with a single line written, ‘Sorry, I can’t do this anymore.’ It was wrinkled with traces of tears, smudged ink, and crumpled edges. I could easily tell how heartbroken she was writing those six words.”

“She filed for divorce on her own and had the papers delivered to me to sign. She couldn’t even bring herself to face me anymore.”

“In the single year I was married, I lost my family, my wife, and my business was left in tatters. I was in despair. It was the lowest point in my life. I genuinely wanted nothing more than to die. But… I couldn’t. Aurelia had left Dawn to me. My baby girl was the last small bit of light I had left in my life.”

“She was… all I had left. So… I couldn’t give up.” Dawn’s father’s breathing picked up as he sniffled. He clenched his teeth as his brows knitted together. He took a deep breath in as tears silently rolled down his cheeks.

He opened his mouth and continued in a grim tone, “No matter what... for my daughter… I… had to stand back up and keep working at things. Day in and day out I sweat and toiled out in the field while carrying her around everywhere strapped to my chest. When it came down to it I did all the work manually with my own two hands, shedding blood, sweat, and tears during that period when my suppliers abruptly cut me off cold turkey and wouldn’t refill my on-site gas tanks.”

“I did that for a full year before things finally took a turn for the better and I was able to work something out with my suppliers. Sadly, by the time things were finally looking up, Aurelia was long gone…”

Dawn’s father’s hand rose up out of the water.

“And… it was all that fucking bastard’s fault!” He slammed his hand down hard onto the side of the tub.

“EVERYTHING!”

His face warped and turned resentful as he gripped the tub with bloodshot bulging eyes while grinding his teeth together furiously as he tried to calm the violent murderous impulses swirling about inside his mind.