The morning after the disaster, I barricaded myself upstairs.
I kept an eye on my father through the security cameras.
As usual, he watched TV, played online Go, and when breakfast time came, he sat in his usual chair and waited for breakfast while watching television.
In our house, breakfast was normally served between six and six-thirty in the morning.
My father sat there with a grumpy expression on his face.
Meanwhile, I continued my surveillance while desperately holding in my urge to use the bathroom.
If he starts another game of online Go, I can go to the bathroom...
Eventually, he got tired of watching TV and started playing online Go.
I quietly went downstairs, used the bathroom, and slipped back upstairs.
He never noticed.
I had breakfast using the snacks I had stored away and drank the barley tea that I had prepared during my mother's hospitalization.
The siege continued.
9:50 a.m.
At last, my father lost patience.
From downstairs, I heard him shout:
"Hey, F! Aren't you going to eat breakfast?!"
Just as I had expected, the only thing on his mind was his own breakfast.
"My head hurts! I feel like I'm going to collapse!"
"So you're not eating?"
"How should I know?!
It took me more than two hours to clean up that kitchen yesterday!
I had to fill out hospital paperwork, make a photo book for Mom, and I barely slept!
I'm exhausted!
My head is killing me!
I'm going back to bed!"
"If you're not going to eat, you should have told me."
Without showing the slightest concern for how I was feeling, my father complained that I hadn't prepared breakfast.
I couldn't believe it.
His dependence on others and his self-centered thinking had reached a pathological level.
Apparently, he found some bread in the freezer, heated it in the microwave, and ate it.
Meanwhile, I continued my siege upstairs.
For lunch, I survived on sweet potato sticks and potato snacks.
After eating nothing but sweet, salty, and greasy food since morning, I started to feel sick.
There was proper food in the freezer, but using the microwave would attract my father.
I couldn't betray my own strike.
At that point, I stopped monitoring him altogether.
Between the junk food, the accumulated exhaustion, and my anger toward my father, I felt faint.
I lay down and continued my strike.
Eventually, it was time to leave for my visit with my mother.
I went downstairs.
When I met my father at the entrance, he didn't say a single word about my condition.
He really wasn't worried about me at all.
Or perhaps that wasn't it.
From his point of view, I was simply
"a bad-tempered son who had slept in and was in a foul mood."
The strike had failed.
It hadn't affected him in the slightest.
For what happened during my visit with my mother afterward, please see My Mother's Illness: Rehabilitation Arc 4.
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