Her mother must have known that girls loving other girls is one of the risk factors leading to magical girldom.
"I'm surprised," one of your friends says. "I didn't expect that kind of attitude from you."
Well, of course he's surprised. The question is pretty much implicit in his voice -- who even
is homophobic these days? Not very many people are, not in this day and age. But
you are, apparently.
You know exactly how many people are homophobic because you've heard the
wishes. "I wish I lived in a world where I could kiss my girlfriend in public," or "I wish my father accepted me," or "I wish my brother was still in my family," on and on and on. People still make these wishes even now, because they've only ever been patches, not fixes. There's always someone who feels
crushed, and all of the magic in the world couldn't change human nature, not completely -- and the magic that exists isn't so magical, in the end.
"It's not
me I worry about," you say. "Or my husband. We're not homophobic."
"You're just worried about everyone else," he says.
No, you're only worried about one person in particular, and it's not even really a
person, you don't think, it never ever was --
"I don't want her to have to feel different," you say rather lamely. "I don't want her to have that kind of issue in her life."
"Kids are always going to feel different," he says. "If they don't feel different for being gay, they'll feel different for being rich, or being poor, or not having enough friends, or having the wrong kind of friends. That's part of life, or at least, it's part of growing up."
You wouldn't worry if only you had a son instead of a daughter.
"You don't have to be a perfect parent, you know," he says. "You just have to be good enough. She'll be fine."
What are you supposed to tell him? You
have to be a perfect parent, because you don't want your daughter to have problems in her life, because problems are how that
thing gets to you. It looks for cracks in your life and tears them open, it chews you up and spits you out.
And now you're left in the awful position of loving your daughter more than anything else in the world, but wishing that she could be someone else. If, if, if -- if she were more normal, she would be someone else, she would be
safe. Wouldn't she be safe? Or would there be some new fault?
The fact that you don't want to admit is that he's right, and there's always going to be that kind of fault in Hitomi's life. You don't want to admit that's true, because it means facing the fact that Kyubey is always there, and he could always take her, and there's nothing you can really do about it. You have to look away, because you want to believe you have control. What kind of parent would you be if you didn't have control? What kind of parent would you be if you couldn't keep her safe?
"She'll be fine," you echo. "I suppose you're right."
It's been years since you saw Kyubey's face, and you've forgotten what it looks like. It feels like a dream, and this is why you allow yourself to look away. Maybe it
was a dream, a nightmare; maybe it was a story you told yourself to make sense of senseless hurt and death.
You know it wasn't a dream, and you know it in your bones.
