Chapter 7: The Family Circumstances of the Kiyoko Household

The cicadas were crying so loudly it was almost deafening.

Summers in the Kyoto basin were exceptionally brutal. On days like this, the correct choice was undoubtedly to stay quietly indoors with the air conditioning blasting.

—However, for seven-year-old Kouya, a second-grader in the prime of his playtime years, "staying quietly indoors" simply wasn't a choice his brain could process. Such is the nature of children; he wanted to go outside.

Due to his parents' circumstances, he had been abruptly dropped off in the city of Kyoto. The seven-year-old Torame Kouya had dragged the young daughter of the inn where he was staying all the way out to the riverbank.

The river was called the Kamo River. Apparently, it was a famous river that flowed through Kyoto from north to south.

—But compared to the Sumida River Kouya had grown up looking at, the Kamo River was narrow and shallow. Calling it "modest" would be a polite way of putting it, but honestly, its scale was pretty disappointing.

According to the adults at the inn, back when Kyoto was the capital, the Kamo River had a history of flooding frequently and making the commoners suffer, but with modern flood control, it didn't look scary in the slightest.

Regardless, the young boy and girl had come to the Kamo River seeking relief from the basin's oppressive summer heat.

At least it'll be cool by the water, the children had naively thought, but they were dead wrong.

They came to the river, but it wasn't cool at all.

—Hot is hot. Sweat beading on his forehead, Kouya picked up a stone from the riverbank and hurled it forcefully at the water's surface.

Plop. The stone sank.

He threw another one. This time, he put a little spin on it. The stone skipped across the surface once before sinking.

After that, the stubborn boy threw stone after stone. It was a solo game called 'skipping stones,' where the goal was to see how many times you could make the rock bounce across the water.

The girl standing beside him watched as he completely immersed himself in the game. She was wearing a yellow sundress and a straw hat.

"Once you go back to Tokyo, my house will finally be quiet again," the girl muttered softly.

The boy stopped mid-throw.

"...You're actually just gonna be lonely when I'm gone, aren't you?" he said, though he didn't turn around to look at her.

"I suppose I will."

She lowered her eyes, quietly admitting it.

The boy started throwing stones again.

"You promised you'd write me letters."

"It is a promise. Though I am a bit worried, seeing as how forgetful you can be, Kouya-kun."

The stone he threw skipped across the water three times before sinking.

—Silence fell over them.

It was the end of summer. The only sounds were the murmuring of the river and the crying of the cicadas. The midday sun reflected off the water's surface, glittering brightly.

The glare made the boy squint.

The boy and the girl's summer was coming to an end. And the end of summer meant they would have to part ways.

"Hey, Kii-chan," the boy finally spoke. The girl slowly lifted her head.

"Are you gonna stay in that house forever?"

He asked her while searching the ground for his next stone.

"...I don't know."

The girl looked down. The wide brim of her straw hat hid her expression completely.

"I don't want to see the people working at the inn cry anymore. I don't want to see my mother and father struggle any further. That's why I decided I would do whatever I can to help. But after that..."

She searched her own heart, looking for the right words.

"If the inn starts running smoothly like it used to, I really don't know what I'd want to do then. I don't even know if I truly want to help my parents or not. I wonder if I even want to stay in that house..."

"...Is that fun for you?"

"Huh?"

Asked so bluntly by the boy, the girl blinked in surprise.

The boy picked up a good-sized stone.

"Desperately trying to keep up appearances in front of adults. Always reading the room, playing the good girl... ain't you tired of it?"

"I'm... I'm not playing the good girl..."

"Yeah, okay."

"I..."

The girl searched for words, but unable to find a proper response, she hung her head.

Kouya wound up and threw the flat stone in his hand with all his might. The stone skipped across the river's surface five times before dropping into the water.

Five skips was a new personal record for the boy, but unfortunately, there were no judges present, and no one there to celebrate his victory.

"Don't push yourself so hard."

Keeping his eyes fixed on the waters of the Kamo River, the boy spoke curtly.

"You're already trying hard enough as it is."

He just said exactly what was on his mind.

"..."

The girl didn't reply.

The boy didn't turn around, but he could roughly guess what kind of face she was making. She was probably troubled because she didn't know how to answer him.

Without looking back, Kouya told her:

"If it gets too hard, it's okay to run away. If you do, I'll—"

—What did I say after that? Just as Torame Kouya was on the verge of remembering, the sixteen-year-old boy woke from his dream.

When he opened his eyes, he was not at the Kamo River in Kyoto. He woke up in Tokyo, fully aware that he was no longer a seven-year-old child.

He could hear the morning sounds of Asakusa.

He woke up to sweltering summer heat.

This was the dead center of Tokyo. Of course, he had an air conditioner in his room. In the middle of summer, he always slept with the AC on.

—But leaving it running until morning felt like a waste, so he had set a timer to save electricity. As a result, when he woke up, the AC was, predictably, off.

Naturally, the windows were closed, too.

The result? Sleeping was comfortable, but waking up was absolute hell.

It was a sauna. A steam bath. The heat felt downright otherworldly.

Well, okay, Kyoto might have actually been hotter.

Crawling sluggishly out of bed, Kouya dragged himself toward the bathroom sink.

The heat wasn't the only reason he was suddenly remembering his time in Kyoto, but it certainly helped jog his memory of those childhood summer days spent with Kiyoko.

—That's right. After all this time, Torame Kouya was remembering what happened ten years ago.

He remembered the first time he met Kiyoko, back when he was dropped off at her house in elementary school. He remembered the girl in the sundress who came to pick him up at Kyoto Station.

His days with her had flown by in the blink of an eye, and eventually, his parents—having finished their long-running theater tour in Asia—returned to Japan.

A year had passed. The day to return to Tokyo arrived.

Which meant it was also the day he had to say goodbye to the girl he had met in Kyoto. They met on a summer day, and parted ways on a summer day one year later.

The six-year-old boy had turned seven.

It was just a few days before he was scheduled to go back to Tokyo that he had invited her out to the riverbank to escape the heat. He remembered feeling awful watching her force a fake smile and act brave in front of the guests even though she was just a kid, and telling her it was okay to run away if things got too hard.

And then...

What did I say after that? The memory was right on the tip of his brain, but he just couldn't reach it. He felt like he could remember, but he couldn't.

He wasn't even sure if he should remember.

Part of him didn't want to ruin the relationship he currently had with Kiyoko. Part of him wanted to preserve the comfortable balance they had built—a balance sustained precisely because those old memories had been forgotten.

"...It's so hot."

Still harboring that sense of frustration, Kouya abandoned his thoughts to the heat and headed back from the bathroom to his room.

He opened the window and went downstairs to the second-floor living room. There, in the wonderfully air-conditioned space, he ate the breakfast his grandfather had prepared for him.

It was a perfectly ordinary late-morning scene during summer vacation.

The break was drawing to a close. Even as he thought about how he really needed to finish his piled-up homework, Kouya found himself sinking into the living room sofa and opening a smartphone app.

While he was doing that, he heard footsteps coming up the back stairs. Before he could even sit up, the second-floor entrance door swung open.

"I'm home. It's dreadfully hot out there again today."

Kiyoko had returned, clutching a massive paper bag.

"Shopping?" Kouya asked, tilting his head at the giant load she was carrying.

"No, no. I just stopped by the dry cleaners."

Pulling several items of clothing from the large paper bag, Kiyoko laid them out on the sofa. Jurou's mourning clothes, Kiyoko's school uniform, and Kouya's school uniform.

Come to think of it, they had dropped both their uniforms off at the cleaners right when summer vacation started.

"Make sure you hand Jurou-ojisama his mourning clothes, would you?"

Saying that, Kiyoko practically sprinted to the refrigerator. Complaining about the heat, the girl pulled out some ice-cold barley tea. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she walked back over to Kouya.

"Kouya-kun, you forgot this."

Pulling something out of the small shoulder bag she was wearing, Kiyoko held it out to her housemate.

"Ah."

A sound slipped from Kouya's lips.

It was the charm. The matchmaking, romance-fulfilling charm from Imado Shrine that Taishi had given—or rather, forced upon—him as thanks for helping with the science class.

He had completely forgotten he’d left it in his uniform pocket right before summer vacation started.

"The lady at the dry cleaners said it was in your pocket, so she gave it to me."

"O-Oh, is that so," Kouya said stiffly. "My bad, my bad."

Crap, Kouya thought, snatching the charm from Kiyoko's hand with robotic, stilted words.

It was just a stupid charm. But for some reason, he really didn't want anyone thinking he had gone out of his way to buy a romance charm and was now guarding it with his life. He especially didn't want Kiyoko getting the wrong idea.

If this had just been a traffic safety charm, he wouldn't be panicking like this.

"I've been thinking this since I first saw it, but the drawing of that beckoning cat is awfully cute."

"Y-You think so?"

"Yes. It's quite rare to see one with a drawing on it. Which shrine is it from?"

Eyes sparkling with intense curiosity, Kiyoko leaned in to inspect the charm in Kouya's palm.

"...Imado Shrine."

Reluctantly, Kouya answered.

Kiyoko blinked. "Oh? I've never heard of it."

"Not really surprising if you ain't a local."

"Is it a shrine nearby?"

"I guess you could say it's close."

"Is it famous?"

"Sorta."

Kouya desperately wanted this conversation to end, but of course, Kiyoko was biting hard on the topic. She wasn't even particularly religious! And she literally lived a stone's throw away from tons of national-treasure-level temples back in Kyoto!

"Kouya-kun, do you go to this 'Imado Shrine' often?"

"Not really."

"Aha! See? Even you don't really visit the local tourist spots!"

Kiyoko grinned triumphantly, as if she had just won a major victory. Apparently, the investigation into her hypothesis that locals don't visit local attractions was still ongoing in her head.

She eagerly whipped out her smartphone and opened a search app. She was probably looking up Imado Shrine. She found it immediately, skimmed the page, and tilted her head.

"They enshrine Izanagi and Izanami. It's a shrine for matchmaking. They're famous for their beckoning cats, and it looks like the charm you have, Kouya-kun, is for romance fulfillment.—...Kouya-kun, is there someone you've got your eye on?"

"It's not like that..."

"Why lie? You were carrying a romance charm around in your pocket like it was your most prized possession."

"I didn't buy it! Taishi forced it on me, and I just shoved it in my pocket and forgot about it!"

Kouya fiercely defended himself. But Kiyoko kept pressing.

"Is that so?"

"Yes, it is!"

Firing back, Kouya frantically tried to think of somewhere to hide the charm. If he wanted to end this conversation, he needed to get this matchmaking charm out of Kiyoko's line of sight, fast.

But what should he do? If he put it in his pocket, they'd just be back to square one. Tying it to his bag was the same problem. Throwing it away would be asking for divine punishment.

At a loss for what to do with it, Kouya started to panic.

—Wait a sec. Why the hell am I panicking in the first place? Was it because he didn't want her to misunderstand?

No, who cares? Let her misunderstand. What's the big deal? "Is something wrong?"

While he was spiraling in his own thoughts, Kiyoko peered at him suspiciously.

"Uh, no."

The moment the boy looked up from the sofa at the girl he lived with, their eyes met. Their gazes locked.

He had to make an excuse. He had to logically explain exactly why he was panicking over his housemate seeing his romance charm.

He had to clear up the misunderstanding.

Kouya desperately searched for the right words to defuse the situation. Yes, what he meant was...

"The truth is, Kiyoko-san, I..."

Words he hadn't even processed tumbled out of Torame Kouya's mouth on pure instinct. For some inexplicable reason, at this exact moment, the pubescent boy blurted out an entirely unnecessary sentence without even understanding what he wanted to say.

He was panicking. In his desperate rush to make an excuse, he had spoken without a single thought in his head.

"..."

As a result, unable to come up with the rest of his sentence, the boy froze stiff.

Kiyoko blinked.

"You... what?" the girl asked.

"Uh, no..."

Kouya panicked even harder. Panicking, he backed up against the sofa.

—Uhhhh, what the hell was I trying to say?! "I mean, uh..."

Suddenly stammering, Kouya frantically searched for words to smoothly navigate his way out of this.

"You... what?"

Eyes shining, Kiyoko leaned in just a little closer. Kouya inched backward.

Hurry up and say something clever to fix this, me! His brain was screaming at him to hurry, but his mind was completely blank. He couldn't think of a single word.

"No, I mean..."

"And? (Translation: May I get my hopes up?)"

"Like I said, I just..."

"There's no need to hold back, you know. (Translation: Hurry up and spit it out.)"

What the hell is this situation... How did I end up like this? Granted, Kouya was the one who had blurted out something completely unnecessary in the first place, but still. He was trapped in a situation and had no idea how to get out of it.

—Someone, save me, please!! Whether some unknown god out there actually heard the boy's desperate plea or not remained a mystery, but either way, a sudden lifeline was extended to him.

DING-DONG! The timing was absolute perfection. As if solely to interrupt their conversation, the back door chime rang.

It was truly a godsend.

The Torame household, which housed Cafe Cassandra, consisted of a commercial first floor and residential spaces on the second and third floors, each with its own entrance.

Behind the shop was an exterior staircase leading up to the living quarters, equipped with a gate bearing a nameplate that read "Torame," alongside an intercom.

"Excuse me!" A female voice rang out from the back door intercom.

It was a voice he didn't recognize. Unless it was someone they knew, anyone coming to the Torame household's back door was almost guaranteed to be a standard residential delivery driver. Cafe suppliers always went to the shop entrance; nobody affiliated with the cafe ever went around to the back.

The voice calling from the back door today was female, but plenty of women worked for major shipping companies these days.

"Coming!"

Without a shadow of a doubt that it was a package delivery, Kouya practically threw himself down the stairs. He totally ignored the deeply unsatisfied look on Kiyoko's face.

But the moment he reached the back door and saw the person standing in front of the intercom, he realized his assumption had been completely off the mark.

—Wait, huh? The person who had pressed the doorbell was not a female delivery driver. In fact, one glance was enough to tell she wasn't a working adult at all.

She was a young girl—maybe a middle schooler.

She was a girl with neatly arranged features and her hair tied up in twin tails. She carried a large backpack with a mascot keychain dangling from it.

Kouya didn't recognize her. At the very least, he was fairly sure she wasn't one of the neighborhood kids.

"Is Shizuishi Kiyoko present?"

The girl asked with impeccable, polite phrasing. She used strict honorifics, but her intonation was completely different from someone from the Kanto region. One sentence was all it took to recognize her Kansai accent.

"Uh, who are you?" Kouya asked in return.

In this day and age, he wasn't about to just hand out personal information to a total stranger.

"My apologies for the delayed introduction. My name is Shizuishi Marika."

The girl bowed deeply. The mascot attached to her large backpack swayed with the motion.

"Oh, that little..."

Kouya remembered the time he had been sent to live with the Shizuishi family in Kyoto.

Beneath the landlady's daughter, there had been a younger sister, born after the landlady remarried. Back then, because of Kouya's busy parents, he had spent most of his time stuck in daycare, so he didn't really have many memories of spending time with her, but it was true—Kiyoko did have a little sister.

Though, seeing as she was a three-year-old toddler the last time he saw her and a middle schooler now, it was safe to say he saw absolutely zero resemblance.

"It has been a long time, Kouya-san. Also, I must apologize. I am ashamed to admit it, but I have almost no memory of you," Shizuishi Marika apologized with total seriousness.

"Well, yeah, obviously."

Even Kouya barely remembered her. They were talking about ten years ago. It would have been far stranger if a toddler remembered a grade school freeloader who had only lived there for a year. That's just how the memories of three-year-olds work.

"I heard my sister was staying here, so I came to visit."

"She's here, yeah, but you sure talk awfully formal for family."

"Do I?"

"You do."

"I heard from my father that my sister was under your family's care, and so I resolved myself to come and visit her."

Shizuishi Marika explained with utmost gravity.

Just from this brief exchange, Kouya could somehow sense that the dynamic between the Shizuishi sisters was incredibly far removed from whatever 'normal sisterly bond' he might have imagined. It was a bizarre distance—neither explicitly hostile nor remotely intimate.

For one thing, the way Marika spoke made it sound like she hadn't even warned Kiyoko she was coming. Coming all the way from Kyoto to Tokyo to visit her sister without a heads-up was generally unthinkable, but...

Then again, when the older sister left her home in Kyoto, she had practically done so without telling her younger sister where she was going.

While Kouya was busy speculating about the exact nature of the Shizuishi sisters' relationship, the older sister in question pushed open the second-floor door.

"Kouya-kun, are you busy?"

Whether her timing was incredible or terrible remained to be seen. Having grown tired of waiting for Kouya to return, Kiyoko had come down to the back door herself.

"Oh."

Kiyoko stopped halfway down the stairs, noticing a very familiar face. Her sister, who had absolutely no business being here.

"Marika, what in the world are you doing here?"

Reuniting with her sister—who was supposed to be in Kyoto—in a corner of Asakusa, Shizuishi Kiyoko blinked in pure bewilderment.

"It has been a while, Sister."

The young girl—Shizuishi Marika—bowed her head politely.

Her sister, who was supposed to be in Kyoto, was standing right here. It wasn't hard to deduce that she had come looking for her.

"If you were coming all the way out here, you could have at least sent a message. I would have come to pick you up at Tokyo Station."

The words that left Kiyoko's mouth were typical for an older sister. She didn't seem to find it odd that her own flesh and blood hadn't contacted her beforehand.

"No, I could not do that."

Shizuishi Marika shook her head at her sister's words.

"Because if I told you I was coming beforehand, I knew you wouldn't welcome me."

"Huh?"

Kouya was the only one who seemed shocked. Standing next to her, he was completely bewildered.

He didn't know what was going on, but it felt ominous.

Wouldn't welcome me was a very smooth way of putting it, but it basically amounted to outright rejection.

—Why the hell are two real sisters having such a heavy conversation? "I say this fully aware that I am not welcome," Shizuishi Marika declared, looking up at Kiyoko without so much as a single tearful hug to celebrate their reunion.

"Sister, will you please return home?"

"Ehh...?!"

Again, Kouya was the only one who was shocked. The person in question, Kiyoko, didn't even twitch an eyebrow, silently listening to her sister's demands.

"You are the one who should inherit Suimeisou."

There, at the back door of a cafe in Asakusa, Shizuishi Marika passed judgment on the future of the long-established Kyoto inn.

A sudden storm was brewing in post-Obon Asakusa.

—The cicadas were crying.

As an unpleasant bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, neck, and spine, for just a fleeting second, the edge of Torame Kouya's memories from those childhood days in Kyoto flashed through his mind.

The sound of the cicadas brought back the faint, murmuring memory of the waters of the Kamo River.

Shizuishi Marika was Shizuishi Kiyoko's biological younger sister, but they had different fathers.

In other words, Marika was Kiyoko's maternal half-sister.

It was a long story, but Kiyoko's mother—frequently featured in various media outlets as the famous landlady of the long-established Suimeisou inn—had lost her previous husband at a young age.

While raising her daughter from her first marriage as a single mother, Kiyoko's mother had been working at a Kanagawa branch of a certain bank, until a personnel transfer abruptly relocated her to Kyoto.

That was her turning point, and one that would eventually alter the fate of a historic, near-bankrupt inn in the ancient capital.

Guided by a strange twist of fate, the single mother arrived in Kyoto.

Transferred to the new branch, Kiyoko's mother visited a client who could no longer repay their loans—to "collect on a non-performing loan," to put it mildly. In blunt terms, she was a debt collector for a financial institution.

Yes. The place she went to collect on that loan was none other than the historic inn, Suimeisou.

A female debt collector and a male debtor.

How in the world such a premise evolved into a romance was completely beyond Kouya's comprehension, but regardless, the young master of Suimeisou fell head over heels for the single-mother bank employee. After many twists and turns, the two were wed.

From what he'd heard, the struggles Kiyoko's mother faced transitioning from a hired bank clerk to the landlady of a historic inn drowning in debt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy were nothing short of extraordinary.

Though the documentaries apparently romanticized it quite a bit, by the time the historic inn finally got back on track through a series of rather precarious, worldly strategies, a daughter had been born to the management couple.

That was Shizuishi Marika.

In other words, Marika was the child born between Kiyoko's mother and her second husband, a member of the founding family of Suimeisou.

—Rumor had it that a succession dispute was brewing over the next landlady of Kyoto's historic Suimeisou inn.

The employees absolutely revered the current landlady who had rebuilt the inn, but they were supposedly divided on which of her two daughters should inherit the business.

It was a question of whether it should be the second daughter, Marika, who carried the blood of the founding family, or the eldest daughter, Kiyoko, who had no blood ties to the founders.

Apparently, the people around them gossiped about this quite a bit.

Loudly enough that it even reached the ears of Kiyoko herself.

"So basically, you ran away to dodge the succession war, huh."

In the second-floor living room of Torame Jurou's house, Kouya let out an exasperated sigh.

It was just the two of them, Kiyoko and Kouya, in the living room.

Telling Marika that he had a part-time job later and that any long conversations should wait for another day, Kouya had sent her back to the hotel where she was staying.

Of course, having a shift wasn't a lie, but he had sensed the atmosphere between Kiyoko and Marika was far from pleasant, so he had simply used it as a convenient excuse to separate the two of them for the time being.

It wasn't that anyone was explicitly at fault; it was just a difficult problem.

The higher the inn's reputation climbed, the louder the expectations of those around them grew year by year.

The landlady's two daughters regularly appeared in the media, acting essentially as public relations representatives for the inn.

The landlady would vaguely and smoothly praise both her daughters, but as the younger sister grew older, that clearly wasn't enough to settle things anymore.

"Please call it taking preventative measures rather than running away. I simply stepped aside before things escalated into a major issue. Besides, that is not the reason I came to Tokyo."

Sitting on the sofa, Kiyoko shot back, looking displeased.

"Huh? Then what is the reason you came to Tokyo?"

"That is not something I am going to discuss right now. I have my own circumstances, you know."

For some reason, Kiyoko's face flushed red, and she looked away.

"Yeah, okay. If you don't wanna say, whatever."

Come to think of it, Shizuishi Kiyoko had been a transfer student at a very weird time of year.

She hadn't transferred in April for the new school term, but in May, a full month later.

If she had talked to her family beforehand and systematically prepared for the transfer, she would have enrolled in April. But that wasn't what happened.

She had probably bolted from Kyoto on a sheer, unplanned whim.

And she likely hadn't told anyone around her a thing.

Without consulting her family, she had made a sudden, impulsive decision and come to Tokyo.

That was likely the truth behind the out-of-season transfer student, Shizuishi Kiyoko.

"Here you go."

Kouya handed Kiyoko a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea.

The scent of bergamot pleasantly tickled his nose.

For the record, the white porcelain cup, the teapot, and the tea leaves were all pilfered from the cafe downstairs.

"Thank you."

Kiyoko obediently accepted the flavored tea.

"So? In the end, what do you want to do?" Kouya asked.

He didn't specify the subject, but it went without saying. He was, of course, talking about Marika and the succession of her family's inn.

"What do you mean?"

Cup in hand, Kiyoko asked back, playing dumb.

Kouya furrowed his brow.

"I'm talking about Suimeisou, obviously."

"I have no intention of inheriting it, which is precisely why I am here. If I intended to inherit it, I would not be in Asakusa."

"Well, yeah, but..."

She had a point.

If she seriously intended to inherit her family's business, she would still be in Kyoto.

"Aside from taking over the inn, I happen to have another dream," Kiyoko declared quietly.

"...If it's about me and Cassandra, you don't have to worry about that."

Feeling awkward, Kouya averted his eyes from the girl from Kyoto. It was a fact that Kouya, for his own convenience, had tried to use Kiyoko.

"...You can totally forget I ever asked you to open a shop in the cafe. —Back then, hearing the regulars talk, I realized my grandpa won't be able to run the shop forever. ...I realized I didn't want the place my grandpa cherished to go out of business. But because I didn't have the confidence to run a cafe by myself, I dragged you into it and tried to rely on you. —It was a cowardly move. So, I'm sorry."

As the boy apologized, Kiyoko slowly shook her head and took his hand.

"I am more than happy to be dragged into it. I was so glad when you invited me."

Kiyoko paused for a moment, looking up at Kouya as if asking for permission.

"I want to share your dream with you, Kouya-kun."

Then, as if slightly hesitant, she added:

"These are my true feelings. There are no hidden sides to them."

With just those words, the Kyoto girl let go of his hand and, as if to hide her embarrassment, brought the teacup to her lips.

"...Is it okay if I depend on you, then?"

"Yes. Please, do not hesitate."

Savoring the tea, Kiyoko nodded.

If she said that, then he would take her at her word and allow himself to rely on her.

But in order for Kiyoko to stay, there was still something he had to do.

Kouya sighed and picked up his smartphone.

"...My circumstances don't matter to your sister, though."

"It would be best if Marika just inherited the inn. There are many employees who support her. I'm sure it's because they've watched her work so hard."

Listening to Kiyoko, Kouya searched his phone's contacts for the number he had coaxed out of Marika earlier.

"Sometimes these things are easier to talk about with a third party involved. I'll give her a call."

Before Kiyoko could even respond, Kouya tapped the call icon.

"Kouya-kun, you really are a busybody..."

Kiyoko muttered, sounding almost like she was pouting.

—Damn right. This was entirely another family's problem.

The sisters' relationship wasn't even that messed up. It was just a highly realistic, lukewarm sisterly bond with a noticeable sense of distance.

Kouya was fully aware he was being a busybody, just as Kiyoko said.

That was just his nature, but there was also a much more fundamental reason.

"...I'd be the one screwed if she took you back with her," the boy mumbled under his breath, keeping his voice low enough that Kiyoko couldn't hear.