When I got home from that hateful place, our dog and cat were always waiting for me at the front door. I'd sit and stroke their soft fur and I'd feel calmer. Human beings lie and do cruel things, but animals are different. The koi I fed every day would hear my footsteps and follow me around the pond. They needed me, and to me they were more than just pets, they were members of our family. When I looked out of my bedroom window in spring, I could see petals of cherry blossom dancing in the spring breeze like snowflakes, and my heart would dance along. When summer came and the cherry had lost its blossom, I would lie under it, watching the sky the picturing the world beyond the floating clouds. When I was little, home was the only place that I could ever be happy.
-

Right before she has the stroke, she had eaten a light meal with my dad.
"That was delicious, but I'm feeling a little tired now," she said when they finished. "I think I'll go lie and lie down."

"Are you all right?" Dad had asked her.

"Oh, I'm fine. Thanks."

She had never opened her eyes again. So she thanked her precious husband, with whom she's been through all the good and bad times, and left this world.

I kept thinking about the time I'd been sick, woken up to find Mom gone, and run barefoot down the street looking for her. Now, no matter how much I searched for her, she wouldn't be there. My tears wouldn't stop falling."
-

Mom had stood a short distance way, holding out her hands and calling,
"Shoko-chan, come on! Ride to me!"

"Shoko, don't look back, okay? I'm going to hold on back here, and I want you to pedal as hard as you can," Dad instructed me.

The handlebars were wobbling like crazy.

"Keep going! Don't look back! Keep looking straight ahead and pedal. Go on! Harder!"

The bike stoped wobbling and at that moment, Dad let go.

"You're doing it all by yourself!"

I rode like the wind.

Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Yakuza Moon; Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter
by Shoko Tendo





That's the author, who tattooed herself after the death of her parents and her own attempt at suicide. She's got a really screwed-up life in her teens, hooked on drugs and put into reform homes etc but now she's okay! (: So this book is about her life story and an insight into a dark and hidden corner of modern Japanese society.

Quite an impressionable book that YinYee lent me but very the R21 lor! haha!