“Lady Mashiro, I have come on orders from Master Kou to escort you to the house.” Mr. Mizusawa stepped out of the Benz he parked in front of my house.
“Mr. Mizusawa! Kon is…Kon has…” Flustered, I flapped my lips unsure of how to explain the situation.
Mr. Mizusawa placed his hand on my trembling shoulder and gently directed me into the car. “Please get in. Lady Kon is all right. I will take you to the Genda estate right now.”
“P-Please do!” I bit my bottom lip to fight back the tears. Mr. Mizusawa opened the backseat door for me, and I slid inside the air-conditioned space, pressing my handkerchief against my mouth to hold in the sobs.
At any rate, I needed to calm down. Mr. Mizusawa told me that Kon was all right. Panicking wasn’t going to help anyone.
After an agonizingly long drive, we finally arrived at the Genda estate.
I entered the foyer with Mr. Mizusawa and was immediately escorted to Kon’s room by one of the maids.
“I shall excuse myself here. Master Kou is already waiting inside,” Mr. Mizusawa informed me.
“Okay. Thank you very much.” I bowed deeply to him and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Kou’s voice said calmly from inside the room. That’s all I needed to hear to know the worst hadn’t come to pass. Slightly relieved, I turned the doorknob. Kou appeared from the hallway connecting Kon’s bedroom to the piano room.
“She just fell asleep. Thanks for contacting me. No one had noticed Kon had collapsed. The phones weren’t working for some strange reason just like you’d said.”
He beckoned me to sit on the couch, and I sat down without a word. Going crazy with concern for Kon, I just couldn’t sit still.
Seeing me fidget, Kou gave a half smile. “You didn’t clean up after your tears,” he said softly as he sat beside me and wiped under my eyes with his thumb. His fingertips were callused from the violin strings. I surely would’ve pushed him away if there was even a hint of flirtation in that gesture. But deep down I could tell Kou was genuinely worried about me.
“Tell me the truth, please. Is Kon seriously ill?”
“Not as far as we can tell. She’s suffered from sudden feverish attacks and coughing fits for a long time now, but there’s nothing blatantly wrong with her body. She’s been through complete physicals and thorough medical testing more times than I can count. She receives a clean bill of health every time. The attending physician said it might be linked to something mental,” Kou explained, his voice grim.
That’s the same as me. Hammering headaches. Bizarre bouts of sickness. Every test coming up clean. Does our shared identity as reincarnated souls have something to do with it?
I shook uncontrollably in the face of that frightening hunch. What was happening to us? Did Kon know what caused this abnormality in us?
“…I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
No. That’s not it. Don’t cry.
You don’t understand. It’s all my fault. I was wrong.
Because…I actually knew everything all along.”
STAB! THROB!
Skull-breaking pain shot through my head every time I nearly remembered something I knew was very important to me. Intense regret flooded through me from the blank space where my memories once existed. My head felt like it was being split open. It hurt so bad I wanted to throw up.
“Mashiro, calm down. Kon’s okay.” Kou put his arm around my shuddering shoulders.
“I probably…smell like…sweat right now,” I squeezed out through the pain.
“Don’t be silly. Even if you did smell, it’d only be because you were panicking to help Kon.”
You always smell good Mashiro. That was the kind of sugar-coated line I expected to fly out of his mouth. But it didn’t.
I leaned into Kou’s arm without putting up a fight. He couldn’t hide his surprise over me nestling up to him with zero resistance. I tightly shut my eyes to escape the relentless pain and nuzzled my cheek against his broad chest. Tears welled up when I heard the sound of his quickening heartbeat.
I might lose Kon forever. I don’t even know if I’m going to get through this in one piece. A future might be out of the picture for us. Maybe my life will end again at eighteen.
The hopelessness suddenly rearing its ugly head amid my agonizing pain shook me to my core.
Daddy. Mommy. Hanaka.
I needed someone to hold me in their arms and tell me it was okay just this once. I longed for someone to capture the pieces of my crumbling body and anchor me to this place. Somewhere in the back of my mind I strongly thought how glad I was that it wasn’t Sou with me right now.
I didn’t want to give that sweet, precious boy the wrong idea. I didn’t want to disappoint him when he viewed me like a surrogate mother.
“…Kou…I’m sorry…forgive me this once.”
I heard Kou’s sharp inhale. I had a feeling that Kou, with his lack of affection for me, would allow me this display of weakness and neediness. I always blamed him for being calculating, when I was the most calculating one. I forced back my feelings of guilt toward the middle school aged Kou and put a lid on them.
This world, my fate, myself; everything scared me beyond measure.
“Both you and Kon are hiding something from me,” Kou whispered, the hurt audible in that tiny voice, and still he adjusted his hold on me to make our position more comfortable for us both.
I felt like he was really losing out at a time like this.
He should’ve just pushed me away and refused me with a snide remark like “don’t lean on me when it’s convenient for you.”
Instead, he embraced me in silence with the gentlest touch until the pain and fear abated.