Now we heard the sound of glass shattering.
It was in Maki’s room!
The moment we opened the door and shone the flashlight inside, the first thing our eyes caught was the back of a tiny figure wearing a white maid’s cap, with her hair in two pigtails.
A long, black, sticklike object stuck out from her right shoulder. It trailed a thin line of smoke, and we caught a sour smell, as if something was burning.
As soon as I realized it was a shotgun, a chill went through my entire body.
What was Uotani doing with that?!
The window glass they had just replaced yesterday was shattered. Maki stood in front of it, biting down on her lip, her eyes narrowed, and a harsh look on her face. She pressed a hand down on her left arm to stop the blood flowing from it.
Had Uotani shot her?!
But why?
After a closer look, I saw that Maki also gripped a scythe in the hand of her wounded arm.
What was going on in this house? What had happened to the others?
“Stop it, Sayo!” Tohko screamed.
Uotani spun around. Her tiny face was pure white in the light of the flashlight, her hair disheveled, her lips cracked, and her eyes glinting like a savage animal’s.
Seeing Tohko, dripping water from her raincoat, and me, soaking wet, Uotani’s eyes widened in shock for only a moment.
“Miss Yuri! You and Mr. Akira are safe.”
Miss Yuri? Mr. Akira? Was she confusing us for them?
Uotani gave a fierce smile loaded with madness and hatred, as if she were truly possessed by something.
“It’s all right; this time I won’t let you dirty your hands, Miss Yuri. I’ll do it myself.”
My skin prickled instantaneously. What was Uotani saying?!
“It’s all the Himekuras’ fault! Oath breakers!”
The muzzle of the gun was pointed at Maki.
“Sayo! I’m not Yuri! Please don’t do this!”
It was as if Tohko’s voice didn’t entirely reach Uotani’s ears. Panting wildly, as if in pain, she fixed on her target and put her finger on the trigger.
Maki glared at Uotani piercingly, then dropped both her hands and shouted, “If you want to shoot me, then do it! But I don’t know anything about a promise! I have no obligation to keep it!”
Rage exploded over Uotani’s face like fire.
Tohko shouted “No!!” and I surged at Uotani to pin her arms down from behind.
A gunshot so loud it seemed to rupture my eardrums rang through the room and gun smoke rose into the air.
The gun had shifted, so the bullet it released had ripped a hole in the wall.
“Stay out of it!”
It wasn’t Uotani who shouted that at me, but Maki.
I watched in shock as Maki threw her sickle away, practically hurling it at the ground.
There was a thunk, and the sickle lodged into the floor.
She strode past it toward us, blood still flowing from her arm.
Uotani leveled the gun again.
If she shot from here, there was no question it would rip open Maki’s chest. But despite that Maki’s eyes were sharp and fierce, as if she was the one closing in on her opponent instead.
“Go ahead! Shoot! Your promise has nothing to do with me! I can’t be bound by something like that!”
Uotani’s voice trembled with spite.
“But everything—it’s the Himekuras’ fault…!”
“What promise did the Himekuras make?”
The air was so shockingly tense it prickled my skin. Maki’s eyes were fixed directly on Uotani’s. Uotani bit down on her lip, and returning Maki’s glare, she said, “That as long as Shirayuki exists, they wouldn’t lay a hand on the house.”
“That was with my grandfather—Mitsukuni Himekura?”
“That’s right! With your grandfather! And with Yuri’s father, too! Fifty years ago and eighty years ago—both of the leaders of the Himekura family made promises to Shirayuki!”
Maki spoke derisively.
“I don’t believe you. Why would they make a meaningless promise like that? You’re lying, aren’t you? There’s no benefit whatsoever to the Himekuras in keeping a promise like that.”
Her words were surely impossible for Uotani to forgive. Her cheeks flared with rage and frustration.
“The Himekura masters made the promise in order to hide their own sins! Because it was the Himekuras who killed Akira!”
I could hear Tohko gasp behind me.
I, too, felt as if a flaming arrow had pierced my heart.
The Himekuras had killed Akira?
What was she talking about?! I thought Akira had tossed Yuri aside and left the estate. I thought he’d studied abroad in Germany.
Uotani spat her answer out in an unbroken stream, as if she was freeing the emotions she’d kept restrained. Maki glared at her with a harsh expression, as if she refused to let a single word slip by unheard.
“Mr. Akira was an obstacle to the Himekuras! They were afraid he would take Miss Yuri away with him. So in order to keep her, all of the servants conspired to kill Mr. Akira. They had orders from the Himekuras to do it. They put poison into his food, then tried to hide it by throwing his body in the pond!
“Grandma realized what had happened so she killed the butler with a sickle!
“But the gardener, the cook, the housekeeper—they all attacked her with kitchen knives and hatchets, so then it was my grandma’s turn to nearly be killed. Then Miss Yuri got a gun and came to save her.
“The two of them got the gardener and the cook and the housekeeper.”
Was she saying that an eight-year-old girl had killed four people with the help of a girl in her teens?!
That Hiroko was not in fact the one who discovered the bodies, but instead was there the whole time and had assisted in the murders?!
My spine trembled at the incredible nature of her raving.
And then the idea that the servants who’d been the victims had conspired to kill Akira!
“My grandma told me how Miss Yuri was drenched in water and cried the whole time she was shooting them. She had tried to pull Mr. Akira out of the pond, but the weeds tangled around him, and even though she tried to cut them away with a sickle, the water was too murky and it didn’t go well and she wound up cutting up Mr. Akira’s body, and it was so sad and painful that she went crazy.
“And after they’d taken revenge for Mr. Akira, when my grandma and Miss Yuri finally pulled Mr. Akira up together, she hugged Mister Akira’s armless body and cried, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Mr. Akira still lies beneath the shrine!”
A crazed woman covered in blood, crawling up from the pond. A white arm clutched in her hands.
The ancient scene floated through my mind as goose bumps rose on my skin.
And after that, the garden dyed in the crimson sunset.
A tiny girl pressing her hands together at an old stone shrine. It hadn’t been Yuri’s grave—it was Akira’s!
“This house is where Miss Yuri and Mr. Akira met—the precious place where Mr. Akira rests.
“Eighty years ago, in exchange for keeping the incident a secret, the Himekuras promised not to lay a finger on either Mr. Akira’s grave or the house. Grandma always protected the house after that.
“Pretended to be Shirayuki and kept the villagers from getting close the whole time.
“The same when the next Himekura master came to the estate fifty years ago—”
Maki leaned forward.
In the roar of the wind blowing through the window and the sound of the rain, Uotani told us the next part in a hard voice.
“Mitsukuni Himekura broke the promise and set fire to the house, trying to burn it down. Like you, he tried to tear down Miss Yuri and Mr. Akira’s house and eradicate it.
“Grandma had been watching the Himekuras the whole time. And she damaged one eye of the Himekura who set the fire and made him renew the promise in exchange for saving his life.
“That as long as Shirayuki existed, he would never again touch the mansion.
“I’ve heard stories about Miss Yuri from Grandma ever since I was little. After Grandma died, I inherited Shirayuki from her.”
What could she mean?
Thinking of the long years that had passed, my head spun.
“As long as Shirayuki exists, you will neither demolish the house nor destroy the pond.”
What thoughts had gone through Uotani’s grandmother’s mind while she protected the estate as Shirayuki?
Putting on a white wig on moonlit nights, haunting the house and pond, and making the villagers think that Shirayuki was still present in the land.
When someone threatened to develop the mountain or destroy the house, she caused accidents and spread rumors that it was Shirayuki’s curse.
And after she died, her granddaughter, Uotani, had done it.
Thus, each time plans were brought forth for development, Shirayuki appeared, and when he heard of it, the Himekura master knew the promise lived on and put a stop to the development.
It had happened time after time through eighty whole years!
Maki’s grandfather had sent her here knowing all of this.
In order to test how much his successor could do in this place where the power of the Himekuras didn’t reach?
Or underestimating her, assuming that she would be unable to do anything or to discover his secret?
Whichever it was, Maki had been in the palm of his hand.
Her jaw taut, Maki asked, “You were the one who threw the threatening letter in at me and the one who dumped blood and fish guts on me, too.”
“That’s right! I’ll protect this house in Grandma’s place!”