It's 2:00 PM
The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly, casting long, weary shadows.
Suzumi was done she dragged herself toward the gate, Her footsteps on the gravel sounded like a bag of chips being crushed by a steamroller.
At barely twenty-two, she looked like she had already carried the weight of a lifetime. Her shoulders were slumped, her gaze fixed on the ground, and her body moved with a lifeless, mechanical rhythm.
Every ounce of energy had been drained from her, leaving behind nothing but a quiet, aching exhaustion.
She reached the entrance, her hand trembling slightly as she rapped against the wood.
KNOCK.KNOCK.
"Mom... I'm home," she shouted, though it sounded more like a weary ghost asking for a refund on life.
Suzumi was an ordinary girl with an extraordinary drive. A hardworking journalism student by day and a hobbyist artist by night, she lived for the truth. Though she carried herself with an introverted shyness, her tongue was a razor. She was brutally honest and fiercely blunt, never bothering to sugarcoat her words—regardless of how others perceived her.
She wanted to be a world-class reporter, mostly so she could get paid to tell people exactly why they were wrong.
After a long, heavy pause, the door finally creaked open.
Her mother stood there, a warm, beaming smile radiating a brightness in the sweltering afternoon heat. "Welcome back!"
Suzumi didn't mirror the warmth. She simply stared back, her face a lifeless mask. With her eyes squinted against the light and her expression a flat poker face, she looked entirely unimpressed—as if her mother's greeting was just more noise in an already exhausting day.
"Suzumi, honey, you look like a zombie that lost its morning coffee," her mom urged, her voice concerned enough to fill a swimming pool. She leaned in, trying to scan Suzumi's face for signs of life. "What's the reason? Is it the university? The news agency?"
Suzumi didn't even slow down. She brushed past her mother like she was dodging a telemarketer. "Don't worry about it, Mom. You wouldn't understand. Even if you did, it's not like you have a magic wand to fix my GPA or my boss's attitude."
She began stomping up the stairs, each step a mini-protest against the universe.
"But still!" her mom called out, trailing her like a persistent puppy. "If you just tell me what's eating you, maybe I could help? A mother's intuition is a powerful thing!"
Suzumi paused at the top of the stairs, turning just enough to deliver a look that could wilt a cactus. "If your intuition is so powerful, then it should be telling you that I'm starving. If you actually want to help, than make me some food. Fast."
SLAM!
The bedroom door shook on its hinges, ending the conversation with a thunderous bang.
Inside, Suzumi threw her bag onto the floor and layed down on her bed on the other side staring on the ceiling and fan above her head for some seconds and lost in her own mind.
Than close her eyes.
She had the classic arrogance of a brat who had spent twenty-two years being "brutally honest" without ever getting punched in the face for it. To Suzumi, everyone else was just a background character in her stressful drama, and she wasn't about to waste her precious energy being "polite" when a good yell was so much more satisfying.
There was a reason for her wierd behaviour.
From an average person perspective, Everything in her life seems going perfectly
As she was doing absolutely good in academics her future was ahead in front of her she has loving caring parents.
but deep within she has her own issues to deal with which for most people may not be a big problem but for her she thinks about it as a big hurdle.
Peace in the Suzumi household wasn't a common occurrence; it was a rare luxury, like a solar eclipse or a functional printer. Even when the house was "quiet," it wasn't truly silent. The walls had absorbed years of screaming matches, and if Suzumi listened closely enough, she could still hear the ghostly echoes of her parents' greatest hits vibrating through the wallpaper.
Her father was the self-appointed Dictator of the Living Room. He ran the house like a high-security prison, where even the brand of milk in the fridge required a three-step approval process and a signed permit. He didn't just want control; he wanted a kingdom.
Then there was her mother. While she didn't rule with an iron fist, she ruled with "aggressive helpfulness." She didn't listen so much as wait for her turn to steamroll Suzumi's problems with her own nonsensical logic, forcing her warped perspectives on everyone until they agreed just to make her stop talking.
To Suzumi, her home was a chaotic asylum, and she was the only inmate who realized the doctors were crazy. She spent every day plotting her "Great Escape," but with a student bank account that cried every time she bought a latte, she was trapped in a gilded cage of family trauma.
It was the perfect origin story for her "Zero Tolerance" policy. When you grow up in a house where your opinion is ignored, you eventually start shouting it—and you don't stop even when the room goes quiet. She wasn't just a brat; she was a survivalist in a war zone of bad parenting.
As if her home life wasn't already a five-car pileup, Suzumi's love life had recently decided to join the wreckage. A month ago, her long-term boyfriend achieved the "Ultimate Jerk" milestone by cheating on her with one of her own friends. It wasn't just a breakup; it was a full-scale betrayal that left her social circle looking like a scorched-earth battlefield.
Now, her life felt like a twisted game of "How Much More Can Suzumi Take?" By day, she dodged her parents' verbal grenades, and by night, she nursed a broken heart in a house that offered zero emotional support. She didn't need a "shoulder to lean on"—mostly because the only shoulders available were either her dad's (which came with a lecture) or her ex's (which she'd rather stab).
She has developed some resentment towards men in general due to her father and ex boyfriend in her life.
THUD
The sound of a heavy fist meeting wood jolted Suzumi out of her nap. She let out a strangled, silent yell—half-scream, half-gasp—as her eyes snapped open.
A sudden heavy knock on her door wake her up from her nap opening her eyes abruptly.
"Aaah", she left a silent yell and than stood finally up from her bed.
She dragged herself to the door and yanked it open. Her mother stood there, offering a "peace treaty" in the form of a tray piled with noodles, a steaming omelette, and a cold soda. Without a word of thanks, Suzumi snatched the tray, performed a world-class door slam, and stomped over to her study desk.
She slumped into her chair, staring at the noodles as if they were the only things that understood her.
"God," she whispered, her voice cracking with pure, unadulterated frustration. "Why is everything hitting me at once? My life isn't even a drama anymore. It's just a very long, very tired tragedy."
Can't you make my life just slightly less of a dumpster fire, God?!" Suzumi hissed, her pen practically carving grooves into the paper of her personal diary.
She leaned over the desk, her handwriting becoming a jagged scrawl of resentment. "Would it have killed You to put me in a house that wasn't a 24/7 wrestling match? Somewhere quiet? Somewhere where my parents didn't treat 'civil conversation' like a foreign language?"
Just as she was reaching a peak of philosophical fury, a sharp, familiar cramp twisted deep in her abdomen.
Suzumi clutched her stomach, her face contorting. "Oh, great. This again," she snapped, the realization hitting her like a wet rag. "The monthly subscription to pain that I never asked for."
She leaned back in her chair, gasping as another wave of discomfort hit. The envy she felt for men suddenly sharpened into a jagged edge. "Boys are so ridiculously lucky," she muttered through gritted teeth. "No cramps, no ruined clothes, no hormonal rollercoasters every four weeks."
Her grip tightened on her pen until her knuckles turned white. "And they don't even have to ask for a hall pass to exist! They can just... walk. Go anywhere. Roam free at 3:00 AM without a care in the world while I'm stuck here in a cage, bleeding and asking for permission to breathe."
Suzumi let out a long, shuddering breath, her head lolling back against the chair. She finally stopped fighting the universe and let her muscles go limp, her body sinking into the seat like a heavy stone.
"If I had just been born a boy..." she murmured to the empty room, her voice trailing off into a dreamy, bitter haze. "Life would be on 'Easy Mode.' No one would track my every move. No 'Where are you going?' or 'Who are you with?' I could just... exist."
A dark, tired smile flickered on her lips. "I could wander the streets at midnight. And if someone dared to bother me? I wouldn't have to hide. I could just beat the hell out of them. And the best part? No one would even blink. Society loves a 'wild' boy, but heaven forbid a girl speaks too loudly or comes home too late."
She felt the weight of a thousand social rules pressing down on her—the constant pressure to be "respectable," to not "shame the family," to be the perfect, polite daughter in a house that was anything but perfect.
"I'm so tired of performing," she whispered, her eyelids growing heavy. "God, you already made this life a nightmare... did you really have to make me a girl in it, too?"
The exhaustion finally won. The dizziness of her cramps and the sheer weight of her resentment pulled her under. As her breathing slowed and she drifted into a deep, dark sleep, she had one final, lingering thought: Being a man would be so simple.
Little did she know, the universe was finally listening—and it had a very twisted sense of humor.