HIS OLDER SISTER MIO HAD said, If I’m not here any more, I’ll hope for one single wish for you, Rion. I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with so much.
He remembered her gentleness.
I want the same as you – to walk to school together.
‘Honestly, I was planning to get hold of the key tomorrow and ask for a wish. If Aki hadn’t done what she did, I was going to ask everyone to let me wish that my sister could come back home.’
The girl whose face was hidden behind the wolf mask.
She had made this castle for him, using every ounce of strength she had left.
Once Rion had had this realization, he couldn’t shake it.
The junior high in Japan he’d wanted to attend.
The friends he’d wanted to have.
‘It’s exactly the same,’ Rion said. ‘This castle is just like the doll’s house you had in hospital.’
The exquisite doll’s house bought by her parents lay next to the window in her hospital room for weeks.
As it was a doll’s house, there was no running water. You couldn’t use the bathroom. And there was no gas.
But there was electricity, since they’d installed tiny light bulbs through all the rooms.
None of the other utilities worked in the castle, but you could still play video games. And you could flick a switch and there would be light. He was never sure why electricity was the one thing they had.
The dolls she played with all wore dresses like the one the Wolf Queen had on now.
The doll’s house his sister loved so much.
The seven children welcomed into it.
The search for the key that followed the story she had read to him over and over, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.
And the day the castle was scheduled to close, 30 March.
Not 31 March.
The fact that this was the anniversary of her death had to be significant.
This castle was prepared just for him.
The Wolf Queen had told them she’d invited other groups before, but he knew that wasn’t true.
The group she had invited was unique.
‘Mio-chan.’
The Wolf Queen didn’t reply.
Rion carried on speaking.
‘The only year missing is 1999. You brought a kid from every seventh year, but 1999 is the only year where there is no representative. Between Aki’s time and mine is a gap of fourteen years, twice the other ones.’
He fairly hurled this at the Wolf Queen’s back, since she refused to turn and face him.
‘You and I are seven years apart in age.’
His sister had died at thirteen, when Rion was six. Her first year of junior high. She had never worn the school uniform for Yukishina No. 5 Junior High that hung on the wall in her hospital room, not even once.
The memory was so painful, as if his chest was being ripped open and his heart was being wrenched out.
‘So – 1999 is you, isn’t it? The girl who wanted to go to Yukishina No. 5 but couldn’t.’
The Wolf Queen’s back seemed to tremble, ever so slightly. But her shiny, toy-like little shoes were planted firmly on the floor.
When had she created all this?
In her last year of life, she’d mostly kept her eyes closed, as if sleeping. Even little Rion thought it better that she sleep if she was in that much pain.
Was it then? he wondered.
Eyes closed, asleep, she had come here every day.
If I’m not here any more, I’ll hope for one single wish for you, Rion.
I want to be able to walk with you to school.
Rion said this innocently enough, his one modest wish.
If I do go back to that school, then I want the same as you – to walk to school together, Rion, and to play with you.
His sister had said it. This is surely what she had wished for.
His sister had always loved making up stories, and this castle and the quest for the key were exactly the kind of thing she would have come up with.
The Wolf Queen still didn’t turn around.
She seemed resolved not to face him, no matter what.
Rion knew well how strong she was; she would not give in.
‘At first, I thought my dead sister had come back since she wanted to see me. But when I saw the way the seven-year timeline seemed incomplete, I finally understood. That you must be travelling here from that hospital room, too. Your reality is still in that room with me when I was six, isn’t it?’
Rion’s voice began to crack as he fought back tears.
‘You were coming over here every day back then, weren’t you?’
He gazed around the castle.
‘That last long year – you spent it in here, in this very doll’s house, together with me and all the others.’
He finally began to understand what her last words to him really meant.
Rion … I’m sorry I scared you. But I had a good time.
On that day, when he was just six, he’d thought she was referring to her frightening him by dying. But she wasn’t. Those were the true feelings of this Wolf Queen who now refused to turn and face him.
His sister had meant the words I had a good time for this Rion, the one here now.
The next day, the castle would close for ever.
30 March.
The day she died.
My sister will leave me. The Wolf Queen is about to die.
‘You did this all for me, didn’t you?’
He choked now on his words; he couldn’t finish them though he was trying.
Rion and his sister were seven years apart in age.
So there was no way they would ever go to school together, even if she hadn’t been sick. Rion was now thirteen years old.
A freshman in junior high, the same age his sister was when she died. That had to mean something.
She’d built this castle expressly to meet her brother when he reached the same age as she had been on the day of her passing.
But not just Rion.
She’d gathered other children from seven-year intervals, none of whom attended school. Mio had always been good at making up stories. Like the premise for a fairy tale, she decided on the rules, and played with them all according to the rules of her game.
Within the castle the Wolf Queen was free, vibrant and full of life. She’d appear out of thin air, as if weightless, then disappear, playing with them all just as she wished, and obviously having a wonderful time of it.
Rion looked at his sister in her frilly dress. He broke down.
Her hair was still long, her hands pale, yet plump and supple. Not the thin hands that Rion had come to know.
‘I’m glad I could see you.’
That was what he wanted her above all to know.
Rion smiled at her back. ‘I was so happy you came to see me in this way. I’ll make it through without you somehow. I’ll let people know what I want to do, and if I don’t like something – well, I’ll let them know. I regret now that I didn’t tell Mum and Dad how I really felt.’
Over this last year and a half, Rion had come to understand that it wasn’t entirely because she wanted to distance herself from him that his mother made him go abroad to school. She’d recommended he study overseas, yet she never stopped worrying about him, evident from all the presents she brought when she visited, and how she’d taken him her homemade cake.
‘Do you ever feel like you want to come back?’ his mother had asked.
Maybe she hadn’t been lying when she’d said she wanted to give him the opportunity to develop his talents. Maybe she truly believed it would be for his own good. Yes, I want to go back to Japan, Rion had thought, and his mother hugged him.
‘I know, I know,’ she said.
I’m the one who gave up and swallowed back down my words, he thought. If only I had persisted with her, she might have come to understand how strongly I felt.
‘Mio-chan.’
The Wolf Queen still didn’t respond.
His sister, who’d given him so much warmth, so many precious memories, wasn’t coming back.
‘Since this is the end, could you listen to one more thing I’d like?’
Mio had always had a soft spot for her little brother. He had such fond memories of that.
She remained facing away and he continued to address her back. ‘I want to remember this,’ he said. ‘I want to remember it all. Remember the others, and remember you. I know you might say that’s impossible, but still I want to.’
He waited in silence, but the Wolf Queen didn’t respond.
Rion turned towards the mirrors. Inside himself, he whispered to his sister, Farewell.
He reached his palms out to the mirror.
Then she spoke.
‘I’ll do my very best.’
He turned around to see her, but the dazzling light from the mirror made his field of vision melt, and the shapes in the grand foyer began to fade. The Wolf Queen was no longer visible.
Something flickered before him. The Wolf Queen was in front of him and their eyes met. She slowly removed her wolf mask and smiled.
Or at least it seemed that way.