Mayumi

Mermaids and Matches

Picture an impecunious, dilapidated house settled on uneven foundation outside of New Paris. Looking beyond the unappealing exterior, you’d see the perfect picture image of a family. A healthy father, a happy mother, a strong son, and a beautiful daughter. Of course, there wouldn’t be much to this story if there wasn’t some big, brutal tragedy coming.


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Love doesn’t keep life running, and Karin learns this at the early age of seven. Bills pile upon other bills and Rin’s father drowns himself in them. She learns how to keep one foot in school and the other in her father’s hospital room -- which they can’t afford -- while her mother struggles to keep them afloat. Her brother takes a part-time job after school and they begin to drift apart.


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Unfortunately, fate follows the same laws as Newton’s First Law of Motion and stays in motion. Rin’s father succumbs after a few years; his immune system compromised by his massive amount of stress compacted by a fatal case of the flu was just too much for him. Her brother turns to drugs to keep him awake long enough to pull off school, an after-school job, and a second job under the table. Eventually, the drugs take more money then he’s earning and the family doesn’t see him anymore. Rin’s family falls apart on her sixteenth year of life when her brother is arrested. This is the final straw for her mother, who mixes a decadent cocktail of various pills and the rest of their liquor cabinet stock.


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Karin doesn’t attend her mother’s funeral, nor does she visit her brother in prison. She keeps her head down, focuses on her schoolwork, and claps for herself when she graduates. Admittedly, Rin deals with the tragedy that was her family quite unhealthily. Instead of grieving, she develops a Nihilistic outlook on life and a very cold attitude towards pretty much all people. Through the years, she’s learned how that attitude can negatively affect her job performance, so she generally wears a happy, sweet facade in the workplace.


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Rin refuses to acknowledge to other people the mess that was her family. She burnt down her world of sunshine and mermaids and make-believe, and built her own world out of the ashes.
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TDLR:[break]
-Parents dead[break]
-Brother in prison[break]
-Rin's a sad person and needs hugs[break]