She hadn’t grown. He hadn’t accepted. And between them yawned a void long devoid of any real “connection.”

He stopped in front of you, nearly face-to-face, leaving the exact space between a command and a slap. You didn’t lift your eyes. He didn’t lower his gaze. In his eyes was the weariness of constantly needing to justify your existence.

— “You failed again.” His voice was flat, ordinary. No yelling. No sarcasm. Just fact. “A briefing isn’t a game. It’s not about what you feel like doing. It’s your duty.”

Your lips trembled as you pressed them shut, trying to keep something too personal from escaping. You bit down, kept your eyes lowered, and only once you were ready, raised them—carefully. Slowly. And in that look was only the soft uncertainty of a teenager.

— “I’m sixteen,” you answered quietly. Your voice faltered. “I haven’t even had a chance to just live… at all.”

Only one question. Why don’t they love you the way you need—to be nurtured, not carved apart, not shaped through pain as if love must come with steel and open wounds? It was love with the taste of iron and gunpowder—endlessly demanding. Does every home sound like a drill command? Do all fathers’ eyes hold not punishment, but disappointment in who you aren’t? Why couldn’t you just be needed? Not the weak link, not the failure to fix?

You didn’t know the answers. And it was that absence, the constant unanswered “why,” that tore deeper than his voice ever could.

He exhaled, tilting his head slightly back—the kind of fatigue you feel when faced with something that simply cannot understand you. He’d heard this speech before—from those who broke.

— “Did I get one?” he asked, voice not louder, but heavier. “By nine, I already knew that everything you have can be taken. You want to know who you are? I’ll tell you. You’re a Riley. That’s already enough not to whine, not to pity yourself, and not to run from responsibility.”

There it was. The big step back. He already knew what came next—you’d try to answer in the wrong words. And still hope he’d hear what lay between them.

— “I don’t want to be you,” you said, shoulders straightening, your voice nearly a whisper—as if it were a confession worthy of punishment.

Silence. Cold. Indifferent. He looked at you and felt the last remaining thread of what once resembled care coil away inside him. That instinct to offer a hand—rough, but his own—had died long ago. You forgave his coldness, his cruelty, his silent detachment, like one forgives strangers. He had never been a home—more of a training camp. Lately, just a shadow. And the care didn’t die because there wasn’t enough of it, but because it no longer knew where to go.

— “You think I want you to be me?” His voice dropped, turned dry. He spoke like during an interrogation—leaving no room to latch onto tone, expression, or mercy. “I don’t care who you want to be. I want you to survive. And for that, you’ll have to become someone who can take the pain and not fall apart from just a glance.”

You raise your head. Tears glimmer in your eyes. Not falling—just heavy, frozen at the corners. You were still standing—barely.

— “I’m scared,” you admitted, lowering your gaze, your voice unconsciously rising in pitch. And maybe… that was the only honest thing spoken on this field today.

— “Then you’ll die,” he said without pause. No rage. No regret. Just the expected outcome.