Did I lose the “Parental Lottery”? #14 Family Without Blood

After my grandmother’s funeral, the family briefly reunited. But once it was over, everything returned to normal. No calls. No messages. No family. I went back to my training life in Tokyo. By then, I had spent nearly three years there. As I mentioned before, I was receiving a monthly salary of about 200,000 yen. Then, suddenly, it stopped. One month passed. Then two. Nobody explained anything. And I certainly wasn’t in a position to ask. Something felt wrong. Still, I had to eat. I contacted a business owner I had met through the senior figure I was serving and asked if there was any work available. The answer came back faster than expected. But not from him. “If you’ve got time for that, devote yourself to me!” The senior exploded. As he shouted, I found myself strangely calm. If you want devotion, feed me first. No matter how noble people made “training” sound, an empty stomach was still an empty stomach. Then he proposed something unexpected. “Become my official subordinate.” I almost laughed. He couldn’t pay me. So instead, he wanted to make me family. Once the sake cups were exchanged, unpaid wages could be rebranded as loyalty. As devotion. As duty. For the first time, I began to see something clearly. Even in that world, everything eventually came back to money. The words were different. Family. Brotherhood. Loyalty. But beneath them, the calculations looked surprisingly familiar. So I called T, the senior brother from my hometown. His response was immediate. And simple. “Forget it.” “Just come home.” No parent had ever said those words to me. Only him. At twenty-three years old, carrying a single suitcase, I left Tokyo behind. I thought I was going home. I had no idea what was waiting for me there. Because about two years later, I started noticing something strange. A car that seemed to appear everywhere. The same faces. The same shadows. The same feeling. And then I realized. My instincts had been right.

To be continued…

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