“Misaki Fujioka and I were cousins. We were the same age. But—how should I put it? We didn’t start out that way.”
Mei lifted her eyes slightly as she began speaking, her voice soft. She had chosen such a suggestive way to lead into her story. I cocked my head, struggling to extract the meaning behind her words.
She went on, unconcerned: “Misaki’s mother’s name is Mitsuyo, and my mother—Kirika’s real name is Yukiyo. They were sisters, exactly the same age.”
“You mean they’re—” I cut in, my head still cocked to one side. “They’re twins?”
“Fraternal, apparently. And their last name is Amane. They said that my Grandma Amane never got married her whole life.”
I thought “Grandma Amane” was Mei’s great-aunt on her mother’s side—the old woman in “Twilight of Yomi”?
“They’re fraternal twins, but even so they looked a lot alike, and they grew up in the same environment, were raised the same way, all the way to adulthood…Mitsuyo was the first to get married. She married a man named Fujioka. I’ve heard he was an office worker at a small food-related company, very young and no-nonsense.
“A little while later, Yukiyo married Kotaro Misaki—my father. He’s a competent businessman, rich, and flies all over the place all year round. Pretty much the exact opposite of Mitsuyo’s husband, you might say.
“And Mitsuyo was the first to have kids, with her husband Mr. Fujioka.”
“And that was Misaki?”
Mei nodded in silence, then her eyes slid smoothly in my direction and she added, “And one other.”
“What?”
“She had twins.”
Mei’s eyes dropped again.
“Two girls. Who were also fraternal twins, but they also looked amazingly alike.”
Misaki Fujioka had a twin sister?
I cocked my head to one side yet again.
Then could that mean…? Impossible.
“Meanwhile, Yukiyo got pregnant, too, a year after Mitsuyo. But there were problems when her baby was born.”
“You told me about that.”
“Yukiyo was incredibly, incredibly sad. To the point that she was going crazy. The sucker punch came when she learned that, because of the stillbirth, she wouldn’t be able to have any more children in the future.”
“…Man.”
It was at this point that I started to get an inkling of what was coming.
“The Fujioka family, which had been blessed with twins, also had some financial concerns and weren’t sure that they would be able to raise two children at the same time. In contrast, the Misaki household needed to do something to save Yukiyo’s spirit, which had fallen into the deepest despair. I’m sure Mitsuyo felt sorry for Yukiyo, too. And so at that point, you could say the balance was struck between supply and demand.”
“Supply…and demand?”
“Yeah. You know what I mean, right?” Mei asked, never spoiling her quiet narrative. “One of the twins born to the Fujiokas was sent to the Misakis as a foster daughter.”
“So then…”
“That was me. I changed from Mei Fujioka to Mei Misaki when I was around two years old. I don’t have any memory that might suggest why I was chosen instead of Misaki.”
Mei broke off subtly at that point, and then continued, as if to push the question away.
“I figure it was probably because of our names.”
“Your names?”
“If Misaki had been adopted by the Misakis, she’d be Misaki Misaki. I’ve decided to think that they made the decision based on some stupid reason like that.”
A ghost of a smile came over her pale, peach-like lips before quickly disappearing.
“And so, since before I can remember, I’ve been raised in the Misaki family as Yukiyo’s—as Kirika’s only daughter. Without ever being told that I was adopted. So when I was younger, I was totally convinced that Mitsuyo was my Aunt Mitsuyo. And I thought that Misaki was my cousin, who was the same age as me and just happened to look a lot like me. Even knowing that we had the same birthday, it was just like, wow! What a coincidence! Chalk it up to our moms being twins, I guess.
“I was in the fifth year of elementary school, I think, when I found out the truth. Grandma Amane let something slip by accident, and then she explained it to me, but that day Kirika…my mother completely lost it. I think she would have kept it hidden from me my whole life if she could have.”
Despite the fact that she was revealing something significant about her own origins, Mei’s tone was unutterably soft and her expression almost perfectly still. Having no idea how best to react, all I could do for a long while was listen to her talk.
“For her, I was essentially a substitute for her own stillborn child. A replacement. It was something similar for my father, too. I think they cherished me more than most people would have. And when I had the issue with my eye, they did everything they could for me, and my mother even made this special glass eye for me…I’m grateful to them. But…”
I’m one of that woman’s dolls.
“But a replacement is still a replacement. At some point, she started to see her own child, the one she should have had, in me.”
I’m alive, but I’m not the real thing.
“I’m sure the reason she shuts herself up in her workshop and keeps creating all those dolls is because of the intense heartbreak she still has deep down for her child. I can’t help thinking that. And from my point of view, once I found out the truth, she’s been nothing but the mother who raised me, not my actual mom…”
Mei’s words trailed off, so I interjected a question. “So what did you think when you found out?”
After much fumbling over her words, Mei replied, “I…wanted to see her. My mother, Mitsuyo. And my father.”
I thought I saw her cheeks flush with the words, though only slightly.
“I didn’t intend to be bitter or blame them for sending me out to be adopted instead of Misaki. I really didn’t. I just wanted to see them and have a real talk with them and confirm the fact that these were the people who had given me life.
“But around then, the Fujiokas moved away. Until then, Misaki and I had gone to neighboring elementary schools and our houses were pretty close to each other’s, but then Misaki changed schools and even though we lived in the same city, our houses were far apart and we couldn’t see each other very easily anymore. Even so, I wanted to see my mother, and I told Kirika that. She got such a sad look on her face when I said that, and then she got so angry…”
“What, because she didn’t want to let you see your birth mother?”
“Right.” Mei nodded, her shoulders slumping very slightly. “I think I mentioned this before. How she’s hands-off about making up rules for where I can go and what I can do, but she worries a lot and gets really sensitive about certain things.”
“Yeah…I remember.”
“That’s what I meant. Getting closer to my mother Mitsuyo. I think it’s natural for her to be nervous about it. Especially because the other woman is her own twin sister. Forcing me to have a cell phone is probably a manifestation of that anxiety. We’re always connected by it. I kind of understand how she feels, but still…”
Again Mei fumbled for words for a moment.