Once again, a sense of unease pricked at Aoi’s chest like thorns.
Actually—now that she thought of it, she may have felt this unease many times before.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mom is always on our side.
Mom always says positive things.
✦ ✦ ✦
But Mom wouldn’t take any concrete action to change Nagisa’s situation.
✦ ✦ ✦
Aoi was smart.
That was why this rising uncertainty enabled her to doubt the foundation her mother had instilled.
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Aoi was kind.
That was why she was able to think seriously about Nagisa’s situation and about what would be best to do for her.
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But Aoi was weak.
So even if her unease was legitimate, she didn’t have anything new to believe in—and so she couldn’t take any sort of action herself.
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“Hey, Big Sis Aoi.”
A few months had passed since the start of the incident.
Nagisa had been talking less, and she was zoning out more often. And that day, her eyes were glazed over again, staring at nothing as she spoke to Aoi.
“Was what Oinko said really right?” Nagisa’s speech was slow, as if using her unsteady head took effort.
Aoi and Nagisa both loved that catchphrase, and they’d imitated it many times just because they liked the sound, even before they knew what it meant. Once they’d understood the words, whenever they were unsure about a choice in life, they always recalled that phrase. That was because it was a story they loved and believed in.
“‘I’m so correct, I think I’ve been hexed! —I’m hexactly right,’” Aoi said.
Nagisa delivered the follow-up. “‘If you stick to what you believe is right, then that’s enough to clear the game!’” Then she gave a tired smile. “Hey, Big Sis.”
“Yeah?”
Suddenly, the energy seemed to bleed out of Nagisa, and Aoi imagined her vanishing into mist.
“Oinko says if you stick to what you believe is right, then that’s enough to clear the game…”
Finally, she gazed out the window in resignation with her hollow eyes.
✦ ✦ ✦
“—Do you think he’d still say that if he saw me now?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“…!”
Aoi felt a heavy, dull shock.
On an emotional level, she understood—this was what she had feared more than anything.
She had known just how scary it was to doubt the pleasant feelings that fulfilled you, and to give voice to those doubts. If she denied the important foundation that made her up, if she abandoned the words that validated the results she produced, then everything about her would become empty. Because she had been unable to shake off that feeling, she had never been able to do anything.
That was why she’d spent this whole time pretending not to see the cruel situation Nagisa had been placed in.
But now Nagisa had put those doubts into words.
Now that she had been pushed this far, now that she was close to her limit, she had doubted it herself.
Now Aoi knew just how much despair Nagisa was facing in the midst of all this.
“Well…”
Nagisa couldn’t be wrong. So it would be okay.
That was what Aoi wanted to say to her.
She wanted to say that Oinko would definitely say that. He would point at her and say, You’re hexactly right.
And then as her older sister, Aoi would kindly lay a hand on her head.
But.
“…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Was it really right to keep believing in that line?
✦ ✦ ✦
Would that faith and hope really save Nagisa?
Would wishes and prayers bring back the glowing smiles that Aoi loved to see on her face?
Would some vague and abstract words change Nagisa’s concrete reality as the victim of bullying?
✦ ✦ ✦
—She found herself feeling there was no way.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Big Sis.” Nagisa smiled weakly, her presence like smoke flickering and vanishing.
Aoi’s head was hanging, so she couldn’t see Nagisa’s final expression, like she was seeking help.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Maybe…it doesn’t mean anything, saying to stick to what you believe is right.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Those words were like a curse on the world. They fell like a wet lump of flesh that stuck to the floor. It was unsightly.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few weeks later.
That day came very suddenly.
✦ ✦ ✦
Haruka and Aoi were in a waiting room at the hospital, sitting side by side like they were praying. The door opened, and Youko came out. Her expression was dark and dull, as if she had seen the end of the world.
Really, the girls might have already known then.
“Mom…!”
“How is Nagisa…?!”
Aoi and Haruka both implored her.
But Youko’s expression remained dark.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Nagisa…is gone.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Aoi and Haruka could barely speak, their voices quiet and choked.
A member of their family was dead. A sixth grader and a third grader were far too young to really accept those feelings.
“Aoi, Haruka…”
Youko slowly knelt down to get on eye level with them and meet their gazes in turn. She desperately tried to hold back her tears, but of course, she couldn’t. Her teardrops, which seemed too large, overflowed one after another.
But even so, she put her daughters first and kindly petted their heads—
—slowly, very slowly. As if she was checking to feel their warmth.
Her outline, wet with sadness, blurred, and she ran her hands over their hair so that they wouldn’t disappear, too.
Love was the only word for the gesture.
Saying nothing, the two of them felt their mother’s kindness, her understanding.
✦ ✦ ✦
—But.
✦ ✦ ✦
Youko looked in both their eyes and smiled encouragingly through her tears.
And then she said to them—
✦ ✦ ✦
“Look—there was nothing we could have done.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The dark shock that Aoi felt then—
For the rest of her life, she would never forget that moment—when the beautiful formation of colorful building blocks all turned to black ash in a single night.
✦ ✦ ✦
“The world chose Nagisa’s death—so there’s meaning in this, too.”
✦ ✦ ✦
For just a moment, Aoi forgot how to breathe.
Youko’s words made a cacophony in Aoi’s darkened heart.
The cursed words continued to roll around in the hollow there, shaking her eardrums over and over until she was dizzy.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So let’s stay positive and find that meaning.”
✦ ✦ ✦
With her reddened eyes and strained smile, Youko was, without question, sincerely mourning Nagisa’s death.
But the way she spoke—she was treating Nagisa’s death as something positive.
“Mom…?” Emotions tinged with despair spilled from Aoi’s mouth like blood.
She did want to believe what her mother said.
She wanted to nod like always at these words, which came from the person she loved most in the world.