Souvenir - Chapter 2.1

I was born a Japanese American in Sleepy Hollow, a suburban residential area near the Hudson River in New York. My father, James, was a Jewish American, and my mother, Yukie, was Japanese. Those close to me call me Tommy, though my given name is Thomas. It’s a common name in English-speaking countries, carrying the meaning of “reliable” or “dependable.”

My father’s family were Jewish immigrants who came to America generations ago, and from my great-grandfather’s time, they had been practicing law. He was a strict man. My mother, Yukie, rarely spoke Japanese outside of my language studies. She was a kind woman, yet whenever she argued with my father, she would slip into Japanese—words foreign to my ears. It must have been an instinctive retreat into her mother tongue in moments of distress.

Thanks to her, I can understand some written Japanese and hold basic conversations. The stories she read to me as a child in Japanese remain vivid in my memory.

When I was twelve, my mother drowned in the pool of our vacation home in the Hamptons.
The police determined that she had consumed a large amount of alcohol, taken sleeping pills, and, while walking by the pool, accidentally lost her footing and fell in. There were no signs of external injury, and the scene suggested no foul play, so it was ruled an accident.

I was the one who testified that she had been taking sleeping pills.
I remember watching as she clumsily knocked several pill bottles off a shelf. I picked up one of them and secretly slipped it into my pocket. To this day, I still keep that bottle as if it were a treasure.

After my mother’s death, my father’s acquaintance, Wang Zhiyuan—whom people referred to as “Ou”—visited us. He wasn’t just a friend; he had been my father’s mentor. He had guided my father in business and investments.

Most of my father’s investments were stable and conservative, but Lotus Lab was an exception. Ou had been involved in my father’s business dealings on multiple occasions, and it was clear that his words heavily influenced my father’s decisions.

If my father was deeply involved in rebuilding this facility, it was more than just business.
Yet, he never spoke to me about such matters. Whenever I asked, he dismissed me coldly.

I accepted my mother’s death as an accident and never delved deeper into it.
But sometimes, I wondered—why did she drink so much that night?
Why did my father act so strangely distant afterward?

I had one memory that stood out—a strange scene I had witnessed.

Once, I had seen my mother alone in the study with Ou.
She had tears in her eyes, pleading about something, but he merely shook his head calmly.
When his hand rested on her shoulder, her face contorted in terror—an expression I had never seen her show my father.

I didn’t understand what it meant at the time.
But one thing was certain—my mother feared Ou.

—

For a little over a year after my mother’s death, I lived with my father and our housekeeper, Maria. My father never spoke about my mother, as if pretending her death had never happened.
I followed his lead.
I knew something was off, but I never voiced it.
Turning a blind eye to maintain the illusion of a normal life—it was the only way to survive in that house.

Then, out of nowhere, my father brought home an Asian woman.
Six months later, he remarried her. She was supposed to be my new mother.

But I never once called her “Mom.”
And it seemed she despised my existence as well.

My father had always been a womanizer. He constantly made my mother cry.
They fought frequently, and even on the night my mother died, he had been with another woman.

Unlike my father, I was withdrawn, slow to warm up to people, and hesitant in most things.
In this country, being quiet and reserved made me weak in his eyes.

He would berate me constantly.
“Are you really my son? How could someone as weak as you inherit my bl00d?”

Even as family, we remained distant. I never tried to bridge the gap with my new “mother” either.

Then, three years ago, when I was twenty-seven, my father died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-one.

I felt sadness for only a few days after his death.

After all, I had known loneliness since the moment I was born.

—

While sorting through his belongings, I found records of his investments.

Among them was the name “TT Lotus Lab.”

At the time, it meant nothing to me.

But recently, I saw an article about it in the newspaper—”A Rapidly Growing Lab in the Organic Market.”

That cosmetic company, now thriving.

The article highlighted their newly developed skincare product, “Lotus II,” which was gaining attention in the high-end beauty industry.