“Do you know why a virgin girl like you could never change the world?” Yuri swiftly pinned back her loosely arranged hair.
“Sounds interesting. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because virgins like you are afraid of having the world spoil your youth and crushing you. That’s why you can only see half of the world,” Yuri declared, as though she had seen this firsthand. “You’re a pitiful child, wrapped up in your own vapid notions.”
She felt just the slightest bit of sentimentality pass through her as she looked at Masako. The girl was driven by her own objectives to the point of austerity, unmoved by almost anything else. She clung to the parts of her life that had been taken from her, somehow managing to keep herself connected to the world by her own dogged persistence.
If she could not get those parts of herself back soon, she might never know happiness again.
Masako grinned, her curls swaying. “Someone like you, who can no longer understand those notions, is simply past her sell-by date. You have no other way to make a living now besides selling yourself for cheap. The gravure tabloids are calling.”
“Was that supposed to be a comeback? As long as you don’t even believe in yourself, your life is going to keep being eaten away.”
“I’m saying that your life has already been eaten away.” Masako pulled her half of the diary out from a large coat pocket, and held it up. “You have the other half, don’t you? I need this, no matter what the cost, so I can save Mario’s life.”
“Of course I do. When you don’t have a safe, the next best bet is to keep something right on your person. Still, I’m not going to hand it over. I need the diary, no matter what, so I can bring Momoka back into this world.”
Not caring whether or not Yuri was finished speaking, Masako ducked to the side and fired a makeshift Gatling gun.
Yuri twisted her body, avoiding all the shots. She leaned against the hood of her car and glared at Masako.
“Let’s do this,” Masako growled.
“Don’t underestimate an actress!”
Behind Masako, Esmeralda struck a gong one time. That was the signal for the fight to commence.
Yuri’s phone rang out loudly from her bag, but there was no way for her to hear it in the heat of battle.
Having run around to every craft store in Shinjuku, I decided to give my brother a call.
“No good. Shinjuku was a wash. I can’t find her anywhere!” Of course, there was the possibility that I passed her by, or that maybe she hadn’t gone to a craft store in the first place.
“Don’t freak out. You keep going on around Kichijoji, and I’ll check out Yozawaya in Ikebukuro,” Kanba said, sounding pretty freaked out himself.
As I hung up the phone, I recalled the words of the penguin hat: The most important thing to you will fall into ruin. She must have been talking about Himari. Himari’s life would be snatched away, and the three of us would never be able to live together again. I was sure that Kanba thought the same thing.
I ran on, starting to grow irritated at the snippets of conversation and laughter I heard in the crowds, who seemed more laid-back and jovial than usual. I was freaking out. The fate that I so loathed was still watching us from somewhere, its eyes glinting, laying a trap to steal everything away from us.
If fate was real, and if it could be changed by either effort or magic, then I wanted to change everything in our lives. Himari would have never gotten sick, no one would be missing from our family, and we would greet each day with a perfect morning, wanting for nothing. We would have a past where nothing unsettling had ever happened.
I flew into a department store in Kichijoji, running to the floor where the Yozawaya was located. I took a good, hard look around the yarn shelves, hoping to see if Penguin No. 3, who disappeared along with Himari, would pop up at my feet somewhere.
“Um, excuse me,” I called to an apron-clad shop clerk. “I’m looking for a girl. Her hair is about this long, and she’s probably wearing a flower print dress and a cardigan. I think she went out to buy some yarn.”
Given only the vague information that Himari was buying yarn, and what I assumed to be the description of her clothing, the clerk tilted their head. I asked the other clerks at the registers, but got no new information. There are many girls in the world who have long hair and wear dresses, and who buy yarn. Himari was but one of them.
I left the Kichijoji Yozawaya, and once again called my brother. “She’s not here, either. I asked the staff, but they didn’t know anything.” I was out of breath, looking around the place frantically. There was no reason that she would bother to go somewhere further out when there were a limited number of stores where she normally shopped.
“No luck here, either. There’s apparently been heaps of girls buying yarn by themselves,” Kanba told me.
“Got it. I’ll look around here a little while longer.” As I hung up the phone, I looked to the reddening sky and sighed. “Himari, where are you?”
If she hadn’t gone to a craft store, then where? Had she gone to see someone who wasn’t us? We were her brothers. We were supposed to know more about Himari than anyone else did, but I knew nothing about where she could have gone.
Ringo wondered if sitting on the cafe’s open-air terrace would be bad for Himari’s health, considering how cold it was, but Himari said that she wanted to enjoy some fresh air, so Ringo respected her wishes. The two faced one another, holding café au laits with lots of whipped cream on top.
“Whoa, you get to meet Tokikago Yuri-san?” Himari stared at Ringo, her wide eyes sparkling. A few people sitting around them looked their way with interest.