Fuyuka sat in silence. Her face was grave and her eyes betrayed no signs of life. It was almost as if she’d returned to her old self, frosty and withdrawn.
Asahi was the first to speak. “Anything I can do to help?”
He couldn’t stand to see her like this. There was no way he could just let it be. It had been the same when he first met her.
She hadn't said much yet, but her earlier utterance had made it clear enough that something was wrong.
“You’re always the one to reach out to me, Asahi.” She spoke as if she was in a daze. A sad smile quietly spread across her face. “I’m going to tell you something about my past. Is that all right with you?”
Asahi nodded. He could see that she was going out of her way, straining behind her smile, and her resolve urged him on. No matter how many times it took, he’d bring warmth with him whenever he was allowed into her glacial world.
“It was always just me and my mother,” she began. “I’m told my father left while I was still just a baby. We didn’t have any other relatives to rely on, so my mother raised me by herself. After a while, a man named Makoto Himuro began coming to our house. He was... scary. He was brusque and inexpressive. Still, I thought he was a good person at heart. He was nice to Mother, at least... After a while, I thought we had become a family.”
Asahi was reminded of the day Fuyuka had left her phone behind. Her wallpaper had been a photo of her as a child with two adults. One had obviously been her mother, but the other—a tall man in a suit—had seemed out of place. Asahi presumed that that was Makoto Himuro, and his intuition about the man had been right. He looked nothing like Fuyuka, and now it was obvious why—the two weren’t related by blood.
“I thought we had become a family.” Asahi dwelled on the ominous words.
“One day, Makoto proposed, and my mother agreed to marry him. She was crying. I thought that was because she was happy—what reason would a child have to think any differently? We were like a family.” Fuyuka’s face softened as she reminisced on old memories, but the expression soon faded. A sigh crawled out of her mouth. “My mother collapsed a few days after that.”
Although she generally looked happy when she’d discussed her family before, Asahi had never been able to shake the feeling that there was a quiet sadness hidden in her expression. The fact that he had been right didn’t feel even remotely satisfying.
“My mother had worked so, so hard to do her job and raise me. She paid for it by contracting a serious illness,” she continued. Her voice wavered in a thinly veiled attempt to stay calm.
“You don’t have to talk about this if it’s too much,” Asahi reassured her.
He knew in his mind that she probably didn’t want to be having this dark, depressing conversation, and that she was forcing herself. That was the last thing he wanted.
Fuyuka shook her head. The look in her eye told him that, while she understood his feelings, she wanted him to hear her story.
“My mother was hospitalized. She died not long after.” Fuyuka spoke in a cold, matter-of-fact tone, as if she was giving a report. Her hair fell in front of her face and hid her expression. “I cried until I couldn’t anymore, I couldn’t even speak when I was done. Makoto took me in after that. He informed me that my mother had told him about her condition, and that he’d asked her to marry him because of that. I’m sure my mother had been crying out of some kind of happiness, but it was much more complicated than that.”
Fuyuka paused to take a breath, then returned to her story. “I was at my wit’s end, and I think Makoto was the same. He had always been a busy person, but he often stopped coming home after her death. I was left by myself a lot. Once Tachibana started working for us, he disappeared completely. He has a duty of care to me, but that’s it. He only ever loved my mother, not me. School was difficult after that, too. My circumstances became something of a talking point, and—while I’m sure there was a lot of kindness and concern for me in those discussions—some of it didn’t feel that way. One by one, my peers withdrew from me.”
The more Asahi heard about Fuyuka’s past, the heavier the feeling in his chest grew.
“My mother, my father, my friends... They all left me. No, I was the one who withdrew. My mother dying, my father leaving, my friends cutting ties with me... if you trace all that back to its source, you find me. That’s what I ended up thinking, at least. It hurt so much that I wished I’d never gotten close to anyone in the first place. If I didn’t get close to anyone, no one could ever hurt me.”
Asahi finally knew the truth about The Ice Queen.
He had his own experiences with losing a family member. His parents were busy people, so he’d often been looked after by his grandfather. Unfortunately, he’d passed away. To this day, he remembered the feeling—it was as if a hole had opened in his heart. He also recalled that his family and his friends had been the ones to help fill that hole.
That was how it should’ve been for Fuyuka, as well, but there hadn’t been anyone there for her. She’d had no choice but to withdraw from the world given her circumstances, struggling forward all on her own. She became hard and focused, refusing to speak to anyone more than necessary. She grew distant and cold—an ice queen. It had always been a defense mechanism to protect an injured heart.
Asahi felt like his chest was going to burst from a storm of emotions.
“I tried to study hard and keep my body in check so I could live alone, but I could never cook as well as my mother. Over time, both my mental and physical health got worse and worse...”