“Stop it! I won’t allow it!” Masako roared, shoulders heaving.
“You refuse to board the train of fate?” Sanetoshi asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes, that’s right. And I won’t let Kanba on board, either!” she declared. Then she whipped the door open and stormed out of the exam room. At last, she had put into words what she felt on the morning after she awoke from the dream.
Left behind in the exam room, Sanetoshi gestured with one hand, as if to say get a load of that.
“She sure was mad,” Shirase giggled.
“Steaming mad,” Souya chimed in.
“Mad enough to go home and throw the diary in the fire, perhaps. I’d do it myself if I could,” Sanetoshi smirked smugly. Then he spun in his chair and looked up at the clock projected on the wall. It must have un-warped itself at some point while they were talking.
“You’re a genius!”
“It’s stunning!”
“As long as that thing’s floating around, I can’t win the game,” he muttered in a low drawl, as if in a trance.
Masako sat on the very edge of the armchair, her posture perfectly straight. As she gazed at the fireplace heating the living room, she pressed a finger to the diary in her lap. If it wasn’t for this stupid thing, that doctor wouldn’t have started talking about nonsense like magic and incantations, and the topic of Kanba wouldn’t have come up, either. She didn’t know how competent Sanetoshi was at his job, but she could tell that he was up to no good. So if he wanted the diary, then perhaps she was better off burning it to ashes—that way he would never get what he wanted. A fitting punishment for lying to her.
She stared at the fire dancing within its sturdy brick constraints. If she fed the diary to the flames, it would turn to ash in moments, never to be reunited with its other half.
“What do you think, Esmeralda?” she asked, without turning to look at the penguin lounging on the sofa nearby. “Tell me: are you made of magic and incantations and all that?”
Esmeralda looked at Masako’s conflicted expression with its narrow little eyes. It blinked several times, all without making a peep.
“But…what if I really do need this to save Mario-san?”
In that case, she couldn’t possibly burn it.
She thought back to Mario sleeping peacefully in his bedroom, his ghostly pale complexion, his long eyelashes, his neatly trimmed blond hair… From time to time, his lips would twist and tremble as he gasped for air. Why wasn’t Kanba around for them at a time like this? How could he possibly turn a blind eye to them? Infuriating as it was, Masako knew the reason for a long time now.
Takakura Himari took up residence in Kanba’s heart. She showed no signs of trying to curry his favor, and yet there she was, openly enjoying it. But as long as she and the rest of that family had their claws in him, Kanba would never return home to Masako.
“Goodness. I’d better crush them soon,” she whispered, rather than letting her tears fall. The flames were so bright and red, they made her eyes hurt, but she squinted at them nonetheless.
Before we even boarded the subway train, the sky outside was covered in a blanket of gray clouds. The temperature was slowly dropping all day, and I could tell it was going to rain. This was slightly different from what the morning forecast promised.
“I wonder how long this can last.”
After another peaceful day at school with no sign of Tabuki anywhere, we boarded the subway train and headed home to Himari—happy times with just the three of us.
“It’ll last forever. No matter what happens, I’ll protect the Takakura family,” Kanba declared without looking at me.
But I wasn’t so sure. Where had Tabuki Keiju gone? If I let myself believe that it was all over, it felt like fate was going to pull the rug right out from under me.
“What if something like that happens again?”
“Relax. I’ve already taken the punishment myself.” He looked down at the deep scars in his palms.
Fortunately, no harm befell Himari—but Kanba was hurt in the process. At the time, I was powerless to do anything; without Oginome-san there, I might have lost it completely. Why did it have to happen? I was trying my best to come to terms with the reality of my past and present, but nevertheless, every day was a struggle.
“It’s all their fault,” I muttered, and Kanba glanced at me. “Mom and Dad, I mean.”
I met his gaze. He looked at me with a hint of confusion in his eyes.
“I’ll never forgive them. I mean, think about it! Tabuki’s not the only victim—there’s tons of people who hold a grudge against us to this very day. And our parents are responsible for all of it. Even Himari’s—”
“Don’t go there,” he cut in quietly to stop me.
I swallowed my words, then rephrased them: “We don’t need them, do we?”
Our parents were nowhere to be seen, but we could still get by without them, so clearly we had no need of them. As long as Himari stayed healthy and we all stayed together, we didn’t need anything else.
“No, we don’t,” he replied curtly. His voice was so low, the vibration of the train was nearly enough to drown it out.
Ideally, I wanted to get home before the rain hit. I didn’t have any plans for tonight’s dinner, but I could probably think of something once I got to the grocery store and saw what was on sale. Something warm and hearty for the winter season.
Thunder rumbled from deep within the dusky gray clouds. Himari lay in bed with Penguin No. 3, flipping through the Takakura family photo album. The penguin peered curiously at each page.
“These are from when we went to the aquarium. You recognize it, right? We’ve got one of them framed in the living room.”
This particular page was covered in photos of the three Takakura siblings when they were kids. With each turn of the page, they grew younger and younger.
“We really haven’t changed a bit, have we?”
Her heart fluttered as she realized what she’d said. My true feelings…my truth…my past… Could she really claim that no one changed?
“And here’s us at the beach…and here’s the amusement park. I was really little, so there were a lot of rides I wasn’t allowed to go on. The haunted house let me in, though. But it was pitch-black inside, and I was scared stiff!”