Chapter 2: "Snow Finds the Clod of Earth"

(T/N: Trigger Warnings: Child abuse, sexual assault of an adult, attempted sexual assault of a child)

I never actually owned one, but back at my old house, I used to see a stray cat.

I had no idea if it belonged to someone in the neighborhood, but I frequently saw it strolling leisurely along the wall visible from our living room. In warmer weather, it would sometimes curl up and nap right there on the wall. Its fur was pitch black all the way to the tip of its tail, and its eyes were a polished green.

I used to sneak food to the cat behind my family's back. Though calling it a secret might be generous—my mother probably saw right through me. Around the time the cat usually passed by, I would set out a small meal along its path. That was about all I could manage as a little girl, and I had no grand desire to befriend it or anything like that.

Still, its eyes were captivating, and I loved the brief moment it turned to look in my direction, so I kept putting out food.

Then, without so much as a parting goodbye, that black cat abruptly vanished.

When days passed without a glimpse and I grew lonely, my mother told me it had probably moved away somewhere. Young as I was, I believed her.

It took quite a while before I understood what "moving away" really meant, and to this day, I feel as though the hollow ache that settled in my chest back then has never truly gone away. That cat is almost certainly long gone.

Even so, a part of me still wished that, somewhere out there, it was alive and well.

Wandering the blurred boundary between memory and dreams, I woke up with that lingering ache in my chest.

I hadn't even done that much for it, yet my grief was as profound as if I had.

Realizing where that déjà vu from Chitaira Kai's eyes had come from, I peeked out the bedroom window, but of course, there wasn't a cat in sight.

"Mama... fancy a morning stroll?"

"Did you take a liking to that phrase?"

"A little, yeah."

Apparently, my husband was aspiring to be one of those suave fathers straight out of a Hollywood movie. It looked like he had a long road ahead of him.

As we went about our morning routines, my husband stood staring intently at my head—specifically, my hair. Wondering if my roots were starting to show, I pinched a lock between my fingers, but he gave a gentle shake of his head.

"I was just thinking about how beautiful you look with black hair."

"Thank you."

Though he'd only ever known me with black hair in the first place.

That husband of mine twirled toward me as though dancing—well, more like spinning in circles like an absolute oddball—before taking my hand, wrapping an arm around my waist, and wobbling slightly on his feet.

"Spun too much."

"Try to exercise some forethought when you twirl, okay?"

I ended up wobbling right along with him. Once the dizziness passed, he used his fingers to gently tilt my chin to the side.

Just the two of us, inside the house, and... what else was there? The conditions were met.

Even as I wondered why he hadn't kissed me earlier in the bedroom when it would've been so easy, I registered his lips drawing closer. But like a sudden downpour soaking my face, a memory resurfaced whether I wanted it to or not. And beyond that rain lay the interior of a car at night.

Why that, of all things? I fumed inwardly.

It was infuriating. To think that the concept of a kiss would bypass my own husband and conjure up that middle school girl instead.

I even felt a pang of infidelity toward him. A fierce indignation welled up inside me at the thought that a childish prank like that had made me act so dishonorably toward my own spouse.

"Is something wrong?"

It must have shown on my face, because he halted just inches away from my lips.

"Ah... F-Footsteps."

"Hm?"

"Mornin'— Oh, oh-ho-ho."

Having just woken up, our daughter stumbled upon the sight of her parents embracing and spontaneously broke into song. Was she trying to set the mood?

Seizing upon her presence, I pushed my husband's chin firmly back.

"Sorry, but the conditions aren't met anymore."

"Good morning, daughter!"

Diverting the momentum of his interrupted kiss, my husband practically bounded over to greet her.

"Sorry for walking in on you two!"

"It's fine. It's totally fine, my child... Just erase it from your memory."

"I second that request."

"Heh-heh-heh."

Evidently feeling bashful herself, our daughter let out a goofy henchman chuckle while wriggling her legs.

"Does Maron want a morning kiss? Do you? Ah, a sloppy face-licking it is!"

Watching Maron enthusiastically lap at my husband's nose, I laughed sheepishly to play off how flustered I was. It was just the simple embarrassment of getting caught on the verge of a kiss by our own daughter.

The time it took for the three of us to work through our respective embarrassments felt ridiculous, yet oddly refreshing.

On top of that, I vigorously rubbed at my cheeks. Over and over, as if trying to scrub the memory away entirely.

The rain in my memories had cleared, but my wet cheeks still needed time to dry.

"Man, washing the car is so much fun," I muttered under my breath a few times, but my excitement stubbornly refused to rise. While I loved stepping back to admire the gleaming finish once it was clean, the actual process held little appeal for me. It was like enjoying an art exhibition without having the slightest desire to pick up a paintbrush. Though that comparison felt slightly off, too.

Blasting a deluge of water from the hose chilled the surrounding air. But that coldness, and the sensation of breathing in the crisp atmosphere, was invigorating—I didn't hate it at all. It carried a certain kind of purity.

My husband was busy working as usual, and the last time I checked, our daughter was sprawled out across the living room sofa like a beached seal. If I ever told her that to her face, she would've leapt to her feet in outrage.

"Washing the car is so super fun~"

I tried to psych myself up with that pointless bravado, though my inner self remained sprawled out on the couch just like my daughter.

"Is it really?"

"Huh?"

My heart bolted upright in a panic and slammed full-force into a glass pane.

Feeling as though a faint voice and a shadow had tapped me on the shoulder, I spun around.

"Ah."

"Hello."

The sound of water splashing against the garage floor echoed with startling clarity.

It was Chitaira Kai. On a Sunday, dressed in her school uniform and carrying her book bag just like any weekday.

Did you take a wrong turn somewhere? I nearly blurted out.

"...Hello."

I hadn't expected her to show up on a weekend, and the incongruity refused to budge. Chitaira Kai peered at the car parked in the garage before turning her gaze toward me. Her eyes were delicate, unblemished, and stirring like fine art—so clear I felt as though I could see my own reflection swimming on their surface. Simply being stared at by them exerted enough pressure to threaten my body with total paralysis.

"I came to get help with studying."

"Oh, is that so...?"

Even as I tried to carry on the conversation while staring off into space, sheer habit naturally pulled my attention back to her. The instant my gaze caught on the very lips I had been deliberately avoiding, I couldn't stop the heat rushing into my face. Unwilling to miss that inappropriately adolescent reaction, the corners of Chitaira Kai's eyes and mouth curled upward. Closing the distance between us without a trace of fear, she looked up at me from inches away. I felt as though her gaze were lapping at the inside of my bottom lip.

"Looks like you haven't forgotten in the slightest."

Her invasive proximity and that teasing inflection sent the temperature of my blood skyrocketing. The seawall of my reason gave way in an instant, my vision flashing blinding white as if washed away by a flood of light, and time skipped a beat.

Driven purely by impulse, my open palm struck Chitaira Kai across the cheek.

Not even the sensation of impact registered in my palm.

"Are you mocking me?"

My voice trembled. Whether out of rage or sheer terror at my own violence, I couldn't tell. Reeling from the blow, Chitaira Kai stumbled so violently that she nearly collapsed onto the concrete. Had I really hit her that hard? I instinctively started to crouch and ask if she was alright, only to freeze halfway down—wait, I was the one who struck her. In that moment of hesitation, Chitaira Kai pushed herself back up and rested a hand against her cheek, as if greeting the sting of the slap.

"I'm relieved to know you're the kind of person who hits where it shows."

"...Huh?"

Chitaira Kai said nothing more, heading straight toward the front door. I almost chased after her like an idiot with the hose still in hand, but the sight of my daughter stepping out to welcome her sent me whirling back toward the garage to feign complete innocence.

"Hey there... Wait, what happened to your face?"

Confronted with the fallout of slapping her without thinking, the blood finally drained from my face.

"I passed by an old lady and whispered 'old hag' under my breath. She heard me and slapped me."

"Whoa."

Unable to look toward Chitaira Kai as she delivered such a brazen lie with a straight face, this old hag retreated into the garage.

"You really shouldn't do that, you know."

"Indeed."

A moment later, my fingertips began to prickle with a burning sensation.

While it wasn't the first time in my life, it had been ages since I'd struck another human being, and my heart hammered violently in my chest. Besieged by an anxiety so sharp I felt tempted to douse my head under the hose, my mind refused to focus on washing the car.

Letting the water run pointlessly, I spent the ensuing minutes paralyzed by an unsettling clumsiness in my limbs.

With every passing minute, my anger cooled and solidified into a bleak, chilling guilt. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to say it right this second, purely to soothe the ache throbbing in my own chest. It was a selfish urge to apologize for my own comfort. Yet I couldn't very well storm into my daughter's room and put on a spectacle of a mother groveling for forgiveness.

I'll apologize when she heads home, I thought, glancing toward the entryway—only to look up at the sun and wonder when on earth that would be. The sun still reigned supreme high in the sky, and if that girl intended to stay for hours, an agonizing eternity lay ahead of me.

Forget about studying and get down here already.

Smoldering with a selfish grievance utterly unbecoming of a parent or an adult, I had no choice but to wait for her to leave.

I couldn't even bring myself to inspect the results of the car wash I'd somehow managed to finish.

By twilight, just as I was beginning to doubt my sense of time and wonder if the sun had truly stood still, the front door clicked open, and tension seized my shoulders. Chitaira Kai stepped outside after exchanging a quick goodbye with my daughter, immediately noticing my gaze upon her.

Perhaps because she'd been struck, Chitaira Kai met my eyes while keeping her mouth firmly shut. I called out to her, pretending I'd simply happened to catch sight of her just as I finished tidying up.

Never mind the absurdity of supposedly spending several hours washing a single car.

"I'll drive you home."

"It isn't night yet, though."

She looked up at the sunset with her mouth slightly agape, wearing a vacant expression. The fact that Chitaira Kai was capable of looking so utterly like a child felt... unfair, though calling it that was ridiculous. She was a child, after all.

When I said nothing and simply watched her, Chitaira Kai rested a hand against her cheek just as she had earlier, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"In that case, I'll take you up on it."

Catching my drift, Chitaira Kai adjusted her course toward the garage. Without even bothering to let my daughter know I was driving her home, I made my way toward the car, my legs still moving with lingering clumsiness.

Truth be told, I was reluctant to drive the car right after washing it. But more than that, I desperately wanted to secure a private space where no one else could overhear us. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Chitaira Kai climb into the passenger seat.

Having her next to me was actually convenient today. It was far easier to talk than if she were in the back.

I slid into the driver's seat and gripped the steering wheel without starting the engine, bracing myself as I leaned forward.

I needed that kind of momentum to deliver an honest apology.

"I'm sorry for hitting you earlier."

Feeling I wouldn't be able to focus if I tried talking while driving, I sought to clear the weight from my chest right off the bat. Chitaira Kai kept a hand on her struck cheek as she averted her eyes.

"It was entirely my fault, so you really don't need to apologize."

"That may be true, but..."

There was no question about that. Even so, the fact that I had struck this child was an inexcusable wrong in my eyes. Condemned not from the outside, but from the depths of my own conscience, I had suffered through every agonizing minute of waiting.

To be plagued by such overwhelming regret that I felt as sick and fragile as if I'd committed murder was completely unhinged. What was this girl to me, anyway? She was just my daughter's friend.

"Still, resorting to violence is never okay."

I cupped Chitaira Kai's face in my hand, gently turning her toward me. For once, her eyes darted about in genuine bewilderment.

"Did it leave a mark?"

"Who knows... I haven't looked at my face."

Checking on her behalf, I nearly squeezed my eyes shut in guilt.

On her pale cheek, even the faintest blush of red stood out with painful clarity.

"I'm so sorry."

When I repeated the apology instead of answering, Chitaira Kai cracked a smile.

"This is the first time anyone has ever apologized to me right after hitting me."

"I... I suppose so, yeah."

Granted, I was acting like an erratic mess, but after such a violent swing from blinding rage to crushing guilt, it was hard to help it. Was I emotionally unstable? Unstable, without a doubt. Just peering into Chitaira Kai's eyes whipped up whirlpools in what should have been an evening calm. There was no way I could remain composed while tangled up with her.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Yuki-san."

With that voice, Chitaira Kai made snow fall gently upon my heart, as though blanketing and concealing a desolate clod of earth.

Yet she was also the kind of child who, the instant she saw that pristine blanket of snow, couldn't resist trampling footprints into it.

"You're not to blame, but could you grant me a favor instead?"

Her tone turned abruptly cheerful, signaling a sudden shift in the tide.

"...Do those two thoughts even connect to each other?"

"Rock solid in my head."

Were this girl's language arts grades going to be okay? My daughter really needed to tutor her more rigorously.

"A favor, meaning...?"

"You could also call it begging."

That didn't sound good in the slightest. What was worse, the intimate distance and the setting dragged the memory of that kiss right back to the surface. I had to head that off at all costs.

"As long as you don't ask for a kiss or something."

"So anything else is fair game?"

She was trying to pin me down with a dangerous loophole.

"Within reason. Strictly within the bounds of common sense. Do you understand?"

I threw up layers of barricades to hold her at bay. Yet Chitaira Kai cleared them with effortless ease, executing a leap far beyond what her petite stature would suggest.

"Then let me lick the fingers you slapped me with."

"……………………Huh?"

The fingers I hit you with... you mean these? Without turning my head, I looked down at my right hand.

Chitaira Kai's eyes shifted downward as well, answering, Yes, those.

…………What did she even mean, "lick"?

"Um, do you actually know what common sense means?"

"Whatever a person is willing to tolerate."

"You... seem to understand, then..."

Even though she understood full well, Chitaira Kai reached out and took my right hand as though borrowing it.

"Wait a second..."

The instant Chitaira Kai's thin lips sucked on my fingertip, a shudder raced down my spine. The contrast in temperature was one factor. Knowing the texture of those dry lips was another. The sheer picture of what we were doing was a third.

"Wait. What are you doing?"

"Treatment."

"Huh? Treat—"

A choked gasp leaked through the clenched gaps of my teeth. It was a whimper born from watching Chitaira Kai's mouth wetly engulf my middle finger. Being forced to watch this innocent-faced child swallow my middle finger into her small mouth tore every objection I had to ribbons. Even without seeing inside her mouth, the heat alone painted a vivid picture of everything taking place within.

There was an alien creature inside. Her slightly textured tongue crawled over my middle finger with uninhibited, meticulous care. As though trying to digest my flesh, her tongue flicked upward from time to time, making my hips jump from the car seat in tandem and filling me with cornered panic. What... what on earth was she doing?

Right here in our home's garage, if anyone—if my family—caught so much as a glimpse through the window, no excuse in the world could ever save me.

"Why... are you licking my finger?"

I ended up asking such an idiotic question.

"Fmrph... hmrph..."

I wished she would stop mumbling with my finger stuffed inside her mouth. Between that and the earnest puffs of her breath washing over my skin, I felt like I was going to lose my mind. In fact, I was already losing it—in real time.

"I can't understand you, so—"

Only when I said that did Chitaira Kai finally slide my middle finger from her mouth.

The soft gasp of air she took as she did sounded as though it stole the breath straight from my own lungs.

"Treatment... The fingers you slapped me with were running hot, so I wanted to cool them down."

Relieved that my released finger was still intact and hadn't been warped into something foreign, I tried to protest her absurd excuse—only for her to take it right back into her mouth. Trapped beneath that upturned gaze as she suckled, far from cooling down, I felt an entirely different part of me flaring with blistering heat.

My face throbbed. It felt as though sparks swirling from an inferno were searing and slicing across my cheeks. Chitaira Kai's ears were flushed crimson as well, completely lost in her fixation on my finger. Faced with this raw, unshielded Chitaira Kai—stripped of every shred of her usual composed facade—my throat constricted.

At the thick, wet sound that rose whenever her pooled saliva overflowed, my mind felt on the verge of drowning.

"………………ah………………"

At the ecstasy staining her cheeks, at the expression unraveling from breathless heat, at the sight of her relentlessly lapping her tongue all the same... I desperately swallowed down the illicit sentiment about to spill from my lips before Chitaira Kai could hear it.

What was I about to say? In all my life, I had never once uttered words like that.

I had lived my entire life seen as a woman of dignity and refinement, utterly detached from such vulgarity.

Yet so easily—as casually as sticking out a tongue—my carefully maintained composure seemed ready to shatter.

"Th-That's enough... We're done."

Reaching the absolute brink of danger, I pushed Chitaira Kai back by the shoulders. And because she dragged her tongue from the base of my middle finger all the way to the tip with agonizing reluctance as it slipped free, the violent shudder running down my spine refused to subside.

Watching Chitaira Kai's lips faintly part and close in lonely disappointment once deprived of my finger, my mind plunged into monochrome once again. Every interaction with her lured me into a black-and-white sea.

Walking alone along a monochrome shore, a pitch-black tide quietly laps at my ankles. Shivering at that temperature difference, I look up at the dark sky—and that sky rapidly swallows the ocean, the sand, and me, folding us together like origami and whisking me away to another realm.

And waiting at the end of it all, suspended in that frozen, colorless world, are those yellow-green eyes, floating alone.

"May I stay late to study again?"

At that whisper, sounding so entirely certain of itself, my shoulders jumped.

It was a request running squarely counter to my standing instruction for her to go home before dark.

The implication of studying late at our house. The implication of me driving her home, leaving the two of us alone.

She was practically demanding permission for everything that followed from an innocent friendship.

It was the exact same brand of provocation as when she had arrived at our house today. She was baiting me. But this time my hand didn't fly—I was far past that point—and the ringing in my ears dragged on like steady rain. The connection was severing.

There was a fatal misalignment between the ordinary decency I had cultivated my whole life and the person I was right now. That was why the ringing wouldn't stop, why my limbs moved sluggishly, why my breathing felt clumsy no matter how hard I focused, and why I was tossed about by the erratic shifts in my own body heat.

As my middle finger brushed against the steering wheel, the jarring, crash-landing sensation nearly wrung a cry from my throat.

Desperately trying to tame the simmering frustration and the heat that made me want to scream, I couldn't bring myself back to the conversation.

I didn't say yes.

And without saying no either, I finally put the car in gear and began to drive.

Back then, I had no inkling of what getting entangled with Chitaira Kai would truly mean.

And even now, perhaps I still don't fully understand.

It was a time when bewilderment still outweighed everything else whenever she licked my fingers.

Yet the reason I gave in was that, deep down, I already wanted to see that melting look on Chitaira Kai's face once more.

Aahh, got held up late again today...

Can't be helped, I've got to drive her home...

Don't wait up for me, go ahead and eat without me...

Yeah, yeah, it really can't be helped.

It really can't.

The superficial excuses I made and the state of my own heart replayed in my mind as if they were someone else's business entirely.

I tried, even for an instant, to escape what was happening right before my eyes, but Chitaira Kai's tongue forcefully yanked me back to reality.

Alone together in the car, I was once again racking up time I could never possibly explain.

Inside the car, parked with Chitaira Kai's house visible in the distance, my finger was once again swallowed up by her mouth.

Today, it was my ring finger. Was there any rhyme or reason to the finger Chitaira Kai chose? Even if I tried to gauge her mood, her mouth received each and every one of my fingers with such tender affection that I couldn't tell the difference.

Seeing Chitaira Kai's upper and lower lips wrap around my finger like a ring, I nearly hung my head in shame. A sudden surge welled inside me, one I couldn't process without banging my forehead against something. Sweeping back my bangs, I pressed a hand to my brow to endure it. So much blood rushed to my ears they felt like separate creatures—as if they might flap their wings and take flight right now.

The mark left by my slap on her cheek had vanished long ago. And yet, looking down at Chitaira Kai, who was sucking on my finger so fervently that her face had flushed crimson from lack of oxygen, I shuddered. A chill ran through me as the shell covering my exterior was peeled away. The scab of common sense I had cultivated over my surface was being ruthlessly torn off by Chitaira Kai.

My true nature, so long overprotected, was touching the outside air, awakening to pain and stimulation.

If I were to find something other than suffering even in that pain... I risked turning into a completely different person.

"Aren't you... done yet?" I said.

Unless I spoke up to end it, Chitaira Kai showed no sign of ever letting go of my finger. Pulling it from her mouth always ended with her tongue clinging to my skin as a matter of course, so I braced myself. Just as expected, just like always, her tongue sluggishly traced my finger. By tensing my arm from the elbow down, I had learned how to endure it. What was I supposed to do, getting used to something like this?

If striking her on reflex was a sin, then offering my finger to atone for it was only natural... Wait, natural? What was natural about this? It wasn't as if Chitaira Kai's tongue would ever wash away my sins—especially not with my finger coated in so much saliva. Without a single sensible reason to justify it, I was accepting this bizarre routine. Using my guilt over hitting her as an excuse: Well, I did slap her...

Yet even if I called it an excuse, I believed that resorting to violence against another person ought to carry that much weight. Perhaps I felt that way because long ago, my own impulsive violence had caused so much trouble.

Hesitating over whether it would be rude to wipe it off right in front of her, I was left with no choice but to stare at my wet finger. Under the interior cabin light, Chitaira Kai's saliva glistened with a slick sheen. There was nothing funny about it. Yet a hollow laugh threatened to bubble up, if only to gloss over the feeling that I was losing my mind.

Stealing a glance at Chitaira Kai, I saw her lips parting and closing in small, rapid twitches once more. It was a habit she had whenever she finished licking my finger. As if signaling that it wasn't enough, her lips moved almost unconsciously. The gesture was, well... No, it was nothing.

It wasn't as though I could casually ask her to her face what she gained from licking another person's finger. Because no matter what answer she gave, I would be the one forced to deal with it.

"Do you know?" she asked. "What your own fingers taste like?"

"...That sounds kind of gruesome coming from you," I replied.

There probably weren't many people in this world who could answer that. Pride myself as I did on belonging to the sensible majority of humanity, I had little tolerance for such bizarre questions.

"I don't. Or rather... did you really think I'd want to know?"

"I was just trying to bring up a topic that might interest you, Yuki-san..."

"What kind of image do you even have of me?"

"An erotic obaa-san."

"Shut up, you idiot."

Little by little, the reserve I had maintained out of consideration for her being my daughter's friend was eroding away. Or maybe dealing with such a cheeky brat had simply coarsened my language. My own daughter was such a sweet girl, after all.

Watching Chitaira Kai smile, I found myself growing slightly curious after all... Which meant her instinct about picking a topic to pique my interest might actually have been spot-on. Reaching that conclusion left me feeling profoundly conflicted.

"Does human skin really have any distinct flavor?"

Whenever I kissed my husband, I had never tasted anything on his lips. Still, I couldn't deny that the stimulation and emotional shift of the act itself might create an illusion of flavor. After all, human beings are creatures who can feel pain in that unfathomable thing called the heart, even without being physically wounded.

"It does," she said.

What sort of illusion was Chitaira Kai savoring through this bizarre behavior?

Wondering if I should even ask, I ducked my head as if dodging sunlight that couldn't possibly reach inside.

"...What does it taste like?"

"A little salty."

"That's a lot more grounded than I was expecting..."

Gaining a useless piece of trivia about the taste of my own finger—something I could never possibly put to use later—marked the end of our session for tonight.

"Good night," I said.

At some point, saying good night when we parted had become routine.

Chitaira Kai's catlike eyes shimmered with a mischievous amusement.

"Good night."

What bothered me was what happened after she smiled, said her farewell, and lifted her head.

Whenever she looked back toward her house, a grim expression surfaced on Chitaira Kai's face. Before I could ask her about it, she slipped out and walked away from the car. While the headlights illuminated her figure, I watched her narrow back retreat into the dark.

Coming over to my house, using studying as an excuse, lingering stubbornly until late at night...

Maybe Chitaira Kai simply wanted to delay going home. Lately, that suspicion had begun to take root in my mind.

Perhaps she created a pretext to stay at my house until late... and sucked on my fingers for that very reason. I tried to convince myself of that wholesome explanation. Yet looking at Chitaira Kai's face, I knew perfectly well there was more to it than that. In other words, her behavior served multiple purposes—a product of both abnormality and calculating rationality.

"...Salty," I murmured.

No matter how much she licked it, it was probably just the taste of sweat welling up in response to what she was doing.

I moved to lick my own finger, but realizing I was about to choose the soaking-wet ring finger, I jerked my hand away in a panic.

I don't know if such a thing as destiny truly exists in a person's life.

Yet the only certainty is that every human being born into this world will eventually die. Birth and death. Those two points alone are fixed from the very beginning. If so, perhaps other points exist, predetermined from the moment we draw our first breath, which we must pass through regardless of what path our lives trace.

All to sketch the shape that person was born to take.

For me to be me.

Perhaps that was why I found Kai on that day too.

"Whoa, it's a total downpour—"

Having gotten up this morning and checked outside the window, my daughter lamented the state of the weather with a groan. Sure enough, it was coming down in sheets. The news had reported a dry spell this year, but this heavy rain seemed like a frantic scramble to balance the books. As accumulated rainwater cascaded from the eaves, it sounded as if buckets were being dumped overhead.

"If you get ready a little earlier, I can drive you to school," I offered.

"I'll eat breakfast with a touch of speed today!"

"That's bad for your digestion, so cut corners somewhere else," I retorted.

Having brought over breakfast, my husband set it down and promptly sidled up to me.

"Mama, would you mind dropping me off at the onigiri shop too...?"

"All right, all right. Looks like I'm running a taxi service for everyone today."

Factoring in the route and the time, dropping my daughter off at middle school would have to come first. I ate my breakfast while calculating how much earlier we'd need to leave home to make all the stops. Glancing over to observe my daughter eating with that "touch of speed," I noticed the motion of her jaw nibbling on her toast was indeed slightly faster... maybe, by the barest fraction.

After we quickly finished our respective preparations, I reminded my daughter as she put on her shoes in the entryway.

"I won't be able to pick you up on the way back, so make sure you take an umbrella."

"Of course, Mama!"

"That was a surprisingly good impression of your father," I remarked.

When I expressed my admiration, both my daughter and my husband puffed out their chests with pride. Even though my husband hadn't done a thing.

"Now you do an impression of me, Dad!"

"Uh, ah, right... Aahh... Aaa-ooo-soo-re... Hold on, let me clear my throat first."

"Save that for when you get home," I said.

Even across the short distance from the front door to the garage, the rain managed to thoroughly soak my clothes and hair. After getting my daughter and Maron into the back seat and my husband into the front passenger seat, I brushed the water droplets from my hair. All the effort I'd put into styling it was undone in an instant.

The moment I pulled the car out of the garage, the violent drumming of rain against the chassis was loud enough to deafen me.

"Now this feels like a proper family outing!" my husband exclaimed.

"Yes, what lovely atmosphere this weather brings," I replied dryly.

If the wipers weren't running at full blast, a veritable waterfall threatened to bury the windshield. Driving in such poor visibility with my family aboard made me far more tense than usual. Back in college, my husband had driven us to all sorts of places in his car, but somewhere along the line, I had become the only one who ever took the wheel.

I pulled onto the main avenue as if following the flow of rushing water. As one might expect, there was hardly a tourist in sight where crowds usually thronged. Even the set-meal diner that had queues out front every morning was completely deserted. In exchange, the main road was hopelessly congested, bringing traffic to a crawl.

Trapped in the gridlock, my daughter peered out at the sidewalk as if searching for someone.

"I have a feeling she definitely won't be coming today..."

"What are you talking about?"

"Chitaira-san wasn't in school yesterday."

Catching the half-beat hesitation before I responded, I hurriedly covered it up.

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. If she skips when it's just cloudy, I figure she's even less likely to show up in a downpour like this."

"Hmm, absent, huh...?"

Playing hooky? Sickness? Family issues? Knowing so little about Chitaira Kai, I had no way to narrow down the possibilities.

That was right—I practically knew nothing about that girl.

Even though I was letting her lick my fingers... What is wrong with me?

It happened on the road to my office, after dropping my daughter off at school and letting my husband and Maron out in front of the onigiri shop. In the blinding sheets of rain that cut visibility down to a fraction of normal, blending into the gloom of the town where anyone would have easily overlooked her, my guard lowered after safely delivering my family...

With so many factors working against me, anyone else would have missed her entirely—even my daughter wouldn't have noticed.

And yet, I found her.

Chitaira Kai was standing stock-still in front of a blade sharpener's shop displaying ornamental swords.

Dazedly, as if she had nowhere left to go.

If she was waiting for the shop to open, standing drenched in the open rain without even an umbrella made her look so terribly fragile and precarious that concern tightened in my chest. I wasn't the kind of person who could just drive on and ignore her.

Rolling down the window, I leaned out and called to her back. If I didn't raise my voice, the sound of the rain would drown it out completely.

"At least put up an umbrella!"

Only after calling out did I realize Chitaira Kai wasn't carrying her schoolbag either.

Drenched from head to toe, Chitaira Kai turned around. The moment she saw me, she pressed down her bangs and broke into a full sprint.

"Huh?! Wha—wait...! What is your problem?!"

At first, her abrupt reaction completely caught me off guard. I had no intention of throwing myself into the pouring rain. But when I saw her slip on the slick, flooded sidewalk and fall to her knees, I made up my mind to give chase. Pulling the car over to the curb, I kept my posture upright and shortened my stride to avoid slipping as I ran after her.

Realizing she was being pursued, Chitaira Kai ran for all she was worth to get away. She darted down an unfamiliar alley, cut past an empty lot up for sale, and as she entered the street leading toward the station, the difference in our leg length finally allowed me to catch up. I grabbed her hand.

"You... sure put up... a fight... running away..."

Stubbornness had carried me through the latter half of the sprint, but the sudden exertion left me on the verge of throwing up.

"What do you want?"

Her arm held fast in my grip, Chitaira Kai voiced her displeasure.

What did I want? That was my line! Bolting the instant she caught sight of my face...

"I don't know, but you ran... so I chased after you!"

"You're a weird person, you know that?"

"You're one... to talk!"

Both of us were so out of breath that our words broke into ragged gasps.

Chitaira Kai strained with all her strength to shake me off. ...Strained?

I barely felt any resistance at all, yet Chitaira Kai was gritting her teeth. She was dead serious. This was the full extent of her desperate struggle. When I put a fraction of strength into pulling her, her feet slipped as she tried to brace herself, reeling toward me. The body that collided against me was so frail and lightweight it felt as if it were hollow inside. Even slamming into me with all her weight hardly jostled me.

Conscious of how shockingly slender her wrist was—slender enough for even my hand to encircle with room to spare—I gasped as if struck through the center of my heart. A strange focus and exhilaration washed over me, drowning out even the roar of the rain.

She was weak. The core of this girl who toyed with me so relentlessly was pathetically, terribly weak.

Realizing the sheer helplessness of this cheeky little Chitaira Kai...

"Ah..."

Ha—

—ha.

For a fleeting fraction of a second, a filthy sense of pleasure reared its head like sewage overflowing from a drain.

Biting my lower lip hard, I forced down that twisted impulse before it could rear its ugly head. What on earth was I thinking at a time like this? Thanks to the pelting rain, the dark urge chilled and died away in an instant.

Both of us were already drenched past the point of no return, the hair and makeup I had done before leaving home now reduced to catch basins for the rain. Since running for cover under the eaves at this point would change nothing, I simply looked down at Chitaira Kai—and froze in horror at what I glimpsed past her bangs.

To make sure of what I saw, I brushed Chitaira Kai's hair aside. That her attempts to stop me were futile had just been proven. Holding her arm down with ease, cold sweat broke out across my body the moment I saw what was marked on her exposed skin.

"What... is this?"

Above her left eye, near her hairline, a large purplish bruise spread across her skin from subcutaneous bleeding.

The bruise was shaped roughly like a person's clenched fist, only slightly smaller.

"I bumped it... against the lintel in my room. Our house is traditional Japanese style, you see."

"At your height?"

TL Note: Traditional Lintel (鴨居, Kamoi)

In traditional Japanese architecture, a kamoi (鴨居) is the upper grooved wooden doorframe/lintel supporting sliding doors (fusuma or shoji). In standard Japanese homes, lintels are set at a height of 175–180 cm (~5'9"–5'11"). Kai is an exceptionally petite 14-year-old girl around 140–145 cm (~4'8"), making it physically impossible for her to accidentally bump her forehead against one while walking.

Chitaira Kai averted her eyes. And as her head turned, exposing the curve of her neck to my gaze, I spotted another bruise.

"Here too."

Parting the wet hair plastered against her skin, I found an identical mark near the base of her neck.

"Aren't these... marks from someone hitting you?"

I immediately regretted letting those careless words slip out. If I had stopped to think about what it meant, I never would have voiced it so rashly.

What was worse, Chitaira Kai casually confirmed my accusation without batting an eye.

"Someone's just bad at it. Hitting me where people can see it like this."

Chitaira Kai's dismissive explanation barely registered in my mind.

I couldn't tell whether blood was rushing to my head or draining entirely from my face.

"Who did this to you?"

"Who knows...? All I can say is it's someone living in that house."

The roar of the rain battered down violently, stirring up deafening static not just in my ears, but inside my heart.

Failing to properly inhale the air thick with rainwater, a sharp, whistling gasp slipped from my throat.

She had skipped school yesterday too.

Wearing her uniform even on days off.

Her sick story about someone burning her clothes that couldn't even pass as a joke.

Fragmented pieces of information coalesced, thrusting a single word into my mind.

"Abuse."

"It's not abuse."

"Don't lie to me."

"Abuse is something parents or guardians do. What happened to me is just plain assault."

TL Note:

Under Japan's Act on the Prevention of Child Abuse (児童虐待防止法), "child abuse" (gyakutai) is legally defined as acts committed specifically by a child's legal parents, guardians, or custodial caregivers (保護者). Because the Chitaira clan operates as a communal household where none of the men recognize biological paternity ("Father Candidates"), Kai coldly and technically rationalizes that her beatings legally classify as simple assault (boukou / shougai).

Was that the logic Chitaira Kai used as a seawall to protect herself? To me, it felt like nothing more than hollow deception.

"Are your parents the ones hitting you?"

"I told you! That's not it! In that house, nobody even knows who their parents are!"

The water streaming down her face sprayed outward as Chitaira Kai's lips parted in a furious shout.

It was the first time I had ever heard Chitaira Kai raise her voice in irritation.

"I told you before, didn't I? Or maybe I didn't, whatever. It's not the kind of family you could ever understand, Yuki-san. You're smart, sensible, and kind. So... please just let go of me."

Aside from her final plea, none of Chitaira Kai's words could draw a coherent reaction from me, even as they reached my ears.

My thoughts were consumed entirely by the horrific reality that this child was being beaten.

Slowly, I released my grip on Chitaira Kai. If she turned and ran away now, I...

I would watch over her. Silently. Standing in the pelting rain.

Free once more, Chitaira Kai didn't run.

Seeing that, I knew what I had to do.

Paying no mind to the sodden, rain-slicked pavement, I dropped to my knees to bring my eyes level with hers.

Then, I cupped her cheeks between both my hands.

Mmph!

"Sorry, squeezed too hard," I said.

I had intended to have a serious conversation, making my clumsiness rather awkward. Adjusting my grip on her cheeks, Chitaira Kai settled down as if freed from suffocation, gazing steadily into my eyes.

For this moment alone, I struggled with everything in my arms not to be swallowed up by those eyes.

"If you... really don't want to talk about it, then fine. If my meddling is just a nuisance to you, I'll respect your wishes." That was a blatant lie. "But if that's the case, I'm going to become completely indifferent. I'll make sure I never look at your face again. Is that really what you want?"

I wrung the words from my throat as if clinging to her myself.

Don't you dare say yes.

Please don't say that to me.

If she did, what on earth would I say next?

Because it was not all right with me at all.

With dread piling upon dread, I waited for Chitaira Kai's answer. Her eyes darted about, as if drifting in the pouring rain.

While her swirling inner conflict searched for an answer, anxiety pounded relentlessly against my chest. I didn't want to be rejected. And yet, I had asked. It wasn't because I had confidence; stepping into someone else's life was always terrifying.

Still, my innermost feelings told me that if I ran away right now, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

And then...

This time, it was Chitaira Kai who reached out and grasped my sleeve. The desperate curl of her fingertips sent a sharp pang straight through my heart.

"...I'm sorry," she whispered.

"You don't have to apologize for anything. Just give me an honest answer: does it hurt?"

Chitaira Kai's eyes always dragged a myriad of emotions out of me.

Conversely, what did Chitaira Kai see when she looked into mine? What had she been hoping for?

After holding my gaze for a moment, Chitaira Kai closed her eyes and laid bare her true feelings in resignation.

"Of course it hurts," she said. "How could it not?"

"...Then that's that."

In that case, I had every right to meddle.

"We need to treat those injuries first. Come on."

I stood up, took her hand, and tried to head for the car, but she planted her feet in resistance. So I simply dragged her along, barely feeling any weight at all.

"I don't need treatment."

"Just come on."

"If they find out I was treated, they'll just beat me even worse."

Her calm, resigned words brought sudden tears to my eyes. I felt Chitaira Kai's pain as if it were my own. Dragging her forward, an overpowering urge to save her right this second surged ahead of everything else.

"Let's go to the police. No, the child consultation center?"

"It's useless. Once they realize it involves the Chitaira family, they'll just brush it off and that'll be the end of it."

"You can't know that—"

Before I could finish saying without even trying, Chitaira Kai talked over me.

"Nobody wants to get involved. Because it's too much trouble."

"..."

Having grown into adulthood, I acutely understood the sheer, heavy weariness that the phrase too much trouble carried.

Just being reminded of it made it temptingly easy to let go of so many things.

"If someone on the other side of the planet dies, it doesn't matter to you, does it? Even though you're physically connected by the earth, strangers don't share any common ground—they're even farther away. So people care even less."

"...You're right," I murmured.

There was truth to Chitaira Kai's words. It wasn't as if I had any desire to save every troubled soul in existence.

I had never once felt the inner ache of strangers passing me on the street.

How to save someone who wasn't right in front of me was none of my concern.

And yet...

"You're not on the other side of the planet. You're standing right in front of me, aren't you?"

Readjusting my grip on her arm, I kept walking toward the car.

"So no, I'm not leaving you alone."

I bundled the sodden Chitaira Kai into the back seat. Exhausted from being battered by the rain, she let me handle her without resistance, slumping limply against the seat cushion.

"...You weirdo," she mumbled.

"I don't want to hear that from you."

A cheeky, twisted, peculiar fourteen-year-old who liked to suck on people's fingers.

A twenty-four-year age gap, I muttered to myself as I put the car in gear. I'm already late for work, I fretted, glancing around while racking my brain for an excuse as I returned to my usual commute route.

"It might not be the best time to say this, but..."

"Huh? What? Did you say something?"

Between the pouring rain and the road noise, Chitaira Kai's voice was hard to make out.

"With your clothes soaked and clinging to you like that, Yuki-san, you look really erotic."

"..."

I decided I hadn't heard a thing.

After taking numerous detours, I finally arrived at work. Reflecting on how intense that last detour had been, I parked the car in the church lot and turned to Chitaira Kai.

"I can't... take time off work. So just hold out until I'm finished."

I couldn't just throw away my everyday life. And yet, I couldn't abandon Chitaira Kai either.

Greedy, overencumbered... I felt as though I would sink right to the bottom under the weight of the baggage I was shouldering.

"If you're busy, you can just kick me out, you know."

"Why do you always have to say things like that...?"

Helplessness, irritation, and a blazing fury at the sheer injustice of it all. There was no point in taking it out on this girl, yet her stubborn obstinacy made me want to grind my teeth. Frustration welled up so fiercely without a clear target that tears threatened to spill if I let my guard down for a second. Instead, rainwater trickled from my forehead down between my brows, the unpleasant sensation grounding me back to reality.

"...I'm sorry," she muttered.

Had my face looked terrifying enough just now to make even Chitaira Kai turn meek and apologetic?

Taking slow breaths to steady my ragged respiration, I composed my emotions and my expression.

"I'll be back once my lunch break starts. You might be bored, but just stay quiet and wait here."

"I'll be fine. Doing nothing is my specialty."

As she spoke, Chitaira Kai flopped flat onto the seat.

"Are you sleepy?"

"Just making sure nobody sees me if they look into the car."

"Ah, well, that's thoughtful of you..."

True enough, even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance, if my family or someone from work caught sight of this girl in my car... it would cause endless trouble. It was practically impossible, out of the question—yet right now, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was stepping straight down a path of "no way in hell." Who could have predicted when today began that things would turn out like this? A torrential downpour seemed on the verge of crashing down upon my life itself.

Once that rain passed, would a clear blue sky truly be waiting overhead?

Leaving Chitaira Kai behind, I headed to the office, where my coworkers immediately expressed concern over my soaking-wet appearance. Only after they did did I realize: Ah. Even if it deepened my tardiness, maybe I should have gone home to change first?

"Didn't you drive today? Did your car break down?"

"Ah, well, um... I tripped on the stairs outside and rolled all over the ground trying to break my fall."

Tossing out a random lie turned it into a major catastrophe, but given my drenched, disheveled state, everyone took it at face value. They even worried about injuries, but I brushed it off with an unseemly flurry of "I'm good! Totally fine! Thanks, thanks!"

"I'll change during my lunch break, so I'll just work like this until then. We don't have any visitors scheduled for the morning anyway, so it's no problem at all!"

Pushing through on sheer momentum, I sat down at my desk to get to work. Whether my head was in any state to actually work was highly questionable. But if I didn't show my face at the office and they called my family, it would arouse suspicion, so I had to come in. The thought crossed my mind, and I almost laughed bitterly at how much it felt like constructing an alibi.

Even though I had nothing to feel guilty about.

...Really?

When lunch arrived and I returned to the car through the unrelenting rain, Chitaira Kai was lying curled on the seat, breathing softly in her sleep.

Her sleeping form overlapped with the image of the black cat that used to sleep on the wall, and the corners of my eyes stung with heat. I realized that my crying spells ever since finding Chitaira Kai might very well be that cat's doing.

That cat probably never wanted me to save it either.

Yet I still regretted those days. So this time, at the very least, I wanted to find some closure I could accept.

Leaving Chitaira Kai asleep, I started the engine to head back home for a bit.

"...This will be fine, right?"

Looking back, I stole a glance at her sleeping face.

A sudden worry darted through my head: taking her home like this... wouldn't count as kidnapping, would it?

Even after I pulled into our garage at home, Chitaira Kai was still asleep, so I gently shook her shoulder.

"...Hey, wake up."

I added my voice so she would know who was waking her, hoping she wouldn't jump awake in fright like she had before. I wasn't sure how well it worked, but she didn't leap out of her skin—just gave a small start as her shoulders twitched, then opened her eyes.

"...I thought I was just tired, but I guess I fell asleep without realizing it."

"Good for you—that's healthy. Anyway, come inside."

Catching sight of the damp imprint Chitaira Kai had left behind, coated in rain and grime from lying down, I made a mental note to clean the back seat later. Bringing her along, I stepped out of the garage. Naturally, since it was before noon, neither my daughter nor my husband were home. I unlocked the front door and slipped off my shoes haphazardly. The moment I took care of what needed doing, I had to get straight back to work.

"For bruises... I should ice them down, right?"

I vaguely remembered learning ages ago that once they turn yellow, applying heat works best. Turning that over in my mind, I headed into the kitchen and found a plastic bag of a decent size.

"Um, bruises like this will heal on their own if you just leave them be."

"Just hush. You have..."

I trailed off, telling myself it wasn't like saying it was a crime, before pushing ahead.

"You have... such a pretty face."

What shame or crime could there possibly be in calling something beautiful what it was? Blushing furiously on the inside, I put up a front, puffing out my chest. The guilt over having slapped such a delicate face threatened to surge back all over again.

"...Did you just confess your love to me?"

"Oh, absolutely. I was deeply moved by the poetic sentiment of it all."

I fashioned a makeshift ice pack out of the plastic bag and handed it to Kai.

"Hold this against your bruises."

"...I wonder which bruise I should pick."

Her wry, self-mocking tone stopped me in my tracks. That was right—it wasn't just her head; she had a bruise on her neck as well. And if there were two in plain sight, what if there were countless more hidden beneath her uniform...? The utter futility of my drop-in-the-bucket meddling made me want to stamp my feet in frustration.

Even so, determined that doing anything was better than doing nothing, I handed her a towel.

"I'll draw a bath, so change once you get out. I'll get your uniform dried in the meantime."

As if reacting to the word "change," Chitaira Kai immediately pushed back.

"I'm fine."

As she tried to back away while toweling off her hair, I caught her by the wrist.

Refusing to let myself dwell on how slender her wrist was, I kept my eyes from dropping.

"Really, I don't need to change."

Chitaira Kai continued her feeble struggle. She was trying with all her might to shake me off, but she couldn't budge my grip in the slightest.

As if perfectly mirroring the plight she was trapped in.

"Your uniform is soaking wet. It must feel awful staying in it."

"I don't care. I'm fine."

"Don't be stubborn."

"It's not... It's not about that."

Chitaira Kai kept resisting, treating the uniform clinging to her skin as if it were a protective wall.

"If you see... I know you'll start pitying me, Yuki-san."

"..."

"I don't want you treating me out of pity."

The strained voice squeezed from Chitaira Kai's throat struck me with an acute ache, making my chest tighten. She had spoken earlier of the distance separating people, but having another person's emotional pain reach me so clearly was exceedingly rare; if one were to dismiss the weight of that lightly, I felt, one would cease to be human.

Besides, hearing her say something like that only made me feel as though I had practically seen it already.

"I swear I won't look at anything, so just go take a bath and get changed. It'll be all right."

I rested a hand on her shoulder. Even if it was only for a fleeting moment, I wanted to give this girl some sense of comfort.

"Besides, I want to take a bath myself. So I'm running the hot water anyway, but drawing a whole bath just for me would be a waste, which makes you an afterthought. ...How's that sound?"

How's that sound? I didn't even know what I was talking about. When it came to moments like this, I had never been blessed with smooth eloquence. I had no right to roll my eyes at my husband's cheesy sense of humor—I was every bit as clumsy and unrefined as he was.

"If I'm just an afterthought... then I suppose I have no choice."

Judging from the look on Chitaira Kai's face, she didn't have the faintest clue what she had no choice about either.

Even so, it was an exchange both of us could accept.

After stopping by the bathroom to start filling the tub, I went to fetch a change of clothes for both myself and Chitaira Kai.

Still, when it came to finding something to wear, picking through my daughter's wardrobe without asking felt wrong, whereas my clothes would likely be far too big. But my clothes were the only option. I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to pick out something that wouldn't look completely ridiculous on her. Wondering what would suit her, which might look passable... Before I knew it, I was playing dress-up with Chitaira Kai in my imagination. Holding the long-sleeved clothes carefully so they wouldn't get wet, I returned to her.

At first, Chitaira Kai accepted the clothes with sleepy eyes, but then a faint spark flickered in her gaze as if she had just realized something.

"Are these... your clothes, Yuki-san?"

"Yes, but... don't worry about the size."

"Yuki-san's..."

"What? If you're going to complain that they smell like an old lady or look frumpy, I'm not listening."

When I tried to cut off whatever remark she was about to make, she stroked the fabric with her palm.

While I was standing there bewildered by her gesture, she suddenly snapped her head up, catching me off guard.

"Um."

"Yes?"

"Could you lend me some underwear too?"

It felt as if something hollow and weightless had punched clean through my skull. Something had definitely just flown right out of my head.

"My underwear is completely soaked through, too."

"A-Ah, yeah. I suppose, but..."

I hesitated over whether I should even say it, but ignoring the elephant in the room was impossible.

"Our chest sizes are completely different—"

"Just bottoms are fine."

"Oh... I see..."

Scurrying back with rapid steps, tinged with a mix of bewilderment, hesitation, and embarrassment, wondering, Is this really okay?, I selected a pair of underwear and handed them to Chitaira Kai. I had tried my best to pick a color and style that wouldn't look unnatural on a middle schooler. Thinking about such things so seriously... and playing dress-up with an imaginary Chitaira Kai all over again.

For some reason, I felt dizzy.

"Huh. So this is the kind of underwear you wear..."

Chitaira Kai unfolded the underwear right in front of me, making my earlobes burn so hot they felt scorched.

"Give those back right now. You can live without panties."

"They're already mine."

"No, they are not?!"

Watching Chitaira Kai scamper away clutching my underwear, I felt a wave of parental relief, wondering if she had cheered up at least a little. Kids were meant to be energetic. Even when they weren't your own, you couldn't help but feel that way.

Leaning my back against the hallway wall, I waited for Kai to undress.

"Ready yet?"

When I called out, a voice tinged with playful ticklishness floated back.

"Reeeady~"

That peculiar sense of ticklish embarrassment threatened to be contagious.

I gathered up her discarded uniform and underwear, making sure not to glance toward the bathroom at all.

"Don't peek, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"You're an erotic obaa-san, so I'm a little worried..."

"Just get in the bath and shut up."

Heading up to the second-floor laundry room, I tossed her uniform and my own wet shirt into the washing machine, then hurried back down the stairs, muttering, Next, uh, what's next? While Chitaira Kai was in the bath, I called my workplace to adjust my schedule. Once that was sorted, I went to the kitchen, wolfed down some cookies, gulped some tea, and called it lunch. After running around doing all that, I almost lay down for a rest, but realizing that if I did I wouldn't wake up until evening, I killed time by cleaning our wet shoes instead.

Chitaira Kai didn't take very long before emerging from the bath.

Steaming gently from the hot water, Chitaira Kai looked... as though she had ventured far away from her usual gloomy dwelling. She seemed almost pastoral, or rather... she looked far more childlike and adorable. Utterly adorable, in fact. My cheeks threatened to dissolve into a helpless grin.

Naturally, the clothes were far too large for her, making her look like a child playing dress-up in her parents' wardrobe. She was diligently cooling the bruised area on her head with the ice pack I'd given her. Once I got back later, I should probably treat her injuries properly.

"That was a nice bath. Thank you."

With the bath towel draped over her head like a hood, Chitaira Kai finally offered a smile.

"If you're hungry, you can... grab whatever you find to eat."

"I don't really eat much for lunch, so I'm fine."

She didn't eat lunch? I wondered what she did about school lunches, then.

"I'll wrap up work early and come straight back."

Once I came back... what would I do? What was I supposed to do?

Could I eliminate even a single one of the things suffocating this child?

As I stood there lost for words, Chitaira Kai smiled at me.

"Okay. I'll be waiting for you, Yuki-san."

When I came back, Chitaira Kai would be here. She was waiting for me.

Just the realization that she was relying on me was enough to give me a cheap, easy surge of energy.

Brushing aside the question of whether I really needed to rush so frantically, I sprinted to the bathroom and dove into the tub. My skin, withered from being lashed by the rain, stung with a prickly itch from the sudden temperature shift even as it came back to life. The sense of liberation—as if every shackle binding me had dropped away—mingled with the thrilling novelty of soaking in a bath in the middle of the day, bestowing upon me an unknown language.

"Fweh-fweh-fufweh!"

Having been revived so thoroughly, I let out a bizarre, newborn cry.

People often use the phrase "dizzying pace," but this day had become so hectic that it made me actually want to spin my eyes in circles. The entire time I was at the office, my hands moved on autopilot while my mind was consumed with thoughts of Chitaira Kai, left behind at my house.

And the moment my thoughts settled on what I had to do next, an honest sigh slipped past my lips: This is exhausting.

Feigning an excuse to leave early before my daughter could get home from school, I walked out of the office. When a coworker jokingly asked who had come down with a fever this time, I replied that I felt like I was about to develop one myself. I had meant it with complete sincerity, but they took it as just another joke.

As the afternoon rolled in, the rain began to ease up a bit. Praying that my troubles would clear up along with the weather, I returned home. I searched around the first floor looking for Kai, but she was nowhere to be found in any of the rooms, prompting the strange realization that there was no room in this house for that child.

I found Kai sitting in the second-floor laundry room with the lights off.

"The air in here felt the clearest, so I took a liking to it."

"If that works for you, fine by me."

Using the first-aid kit I'd brought up, I taped up Chitaira Kai's bruises. She offered no resistance now, letting me do as I wished.

"Did you manage to get some rest?"

"Oh, yes."

She seemed dazed, her reactions sluggish. Her cheeks were flushed warmer than usual, carrying a radiant sheen that made me almost avert my eyes for a moment. What kind of bizarre thoughts was I harboring about a sick child?

"Do you have a cold or a fever?"

"Huh?"

"Your face is red."

"...Is it? It's just your imagination."

There was no way that flush was my imagination, but well, if she was feeling better, I supposed that was all that mattered.

After finishing treating her injuries, I gathered her dried uniform along with her washed underwear. ...Picturing Chitaira Kai wearing my underwear right at this very moment stirred an oddly restless sensation inside me. Having someone else wearing my undergarments felt almost like my blood was circulating through another person's veins... It left me with a strange, lingering discomfort.

"You can just leave my clothes around here somewhere."

"Okay..."

Why did Chitaira Kai look down with such reluctant, lingering regret as I handed her uniform back to her?

"Come down to the front door once you're changed. We're leaving right away."

Looking down at Chitaira Kai's forehead as her expression silently pleaded, Where?, I answered.

"Your house."

Back in her school uniform, Chitaira Kai let her voice fall over me, cold as the rain, before slipping on her shoes.

"You really shouldn't go."

"I can't very well just leave it at that."

"Don't tell me you're planning to march over there and plead, 'Please don't hit poor little Chitaira Kai-chan~' or something?"

"...If a plea like that were enough to stop them, life would be a whole lot easier."

I had no illusions about uprooting a problem as deeply entrenched as abuse.

"I'm just going to inform them that I'm taking you into protective custody."

Chitaira Kai knitted her brows. I aimed my explanation straight at the crease between her eyes.

"I don't want to send you back to a house full of people who abuse you. But if I don't give them at least some notice, it becomes kidnapping. Once I tell them I'm taking you in, we're leaving immediately."

Hearing that, Chitaira Kai sighed. "You have far too much common sense."

"I'm telling you, what's waiting there isn't abuse, and they aren't parents... You'd understand what I mean if you went, but you're better off not knowing. Look... I just really don't want to expose you to anything horrific, Yuki-san."

"I've already seen enough horrific things... More than enough."

Admittedly, expecting a rational response from people who used violence against a child was a mistake.

It might end up being nothing more than a one-sided declaration, but even so, Chitaira Kai was a minor.

This is necessary to save a child, I told myself, slipping on my shoes while looking up at her.

"...Well, I do need to grab some things if I'm running away from home."

Perhaps giving up on talking me out of it, Chitaira Kai slipped into her shoes as well.

"Let's go. It'll be fine—I'm with you."

As I offered those words and placed a reassuring hand on Chitaira Kai's hunched back, she let out a quiet breath.

"The fact that you're coming with me... is precisely what's making my feelings so complicated."

From then until we arrived at the manor, Chitaira Kai remained almost entirely silent.

While behind the wheel, I voiced my concerns to her.

"It might turn into an argument, though."

"They aren't the kind of people you can even argue with."

Chitaira Kai shot down my prediction with a sigh.

Eventually, I parked near the manor I had only ever seen from a distance, and the two of us headed toward it.

Up close, the sheer scale of the gate—which had always seemed massive from afar—completely overwhelmed me. It was far grander than the main gate of our local elementary school, an institution that had stood for decades.

Before we passed through that gate, Chitaira Kai took my hand.

"Promise me. If I take your hand and tell you to run, no matter where we are or what's going on, you'll run with me."

"...What's that supposed to mean?"

"Please. This is the one thing... I really need you to promise me."

Chitaira Kai squeezed my hand with both of hers, gripping so tightly it dug into my skin. Every ounce of strength the girl possessed was channeled into that hold. It clawed at my heart far more fiercely than her resistance in the rain had.

"All right. I promise."

I gave Chitaira Kai's hand a firm squeeze before letting go. Then, side by side, we stepped through the massive gate.

Beyond it lay an opulent grandeur that an ordinary person would only ever see on a screen, sprawling directly before our eyes. As if the weakening rain were swallowing every trace of sound, not a single noise drifted from the imposing estate. To make matters worse, the path from the gate to the front entrance was ridiculously long, forcing us to walk for nearly five minutes.

"Talk about wildly inconvenient."

When I grumbled under my breath, Chitaira Kai agreed with utter disgust. "Seriously."

Wondering if anyone was home, I slipped off my shoes in the entryway and peered further inside.

At the far end of an endless hallway, a face emerged from around a corner, making my eyes go wide.

The instant eyes the exact same shade as Chitaira Kai's locked onto us, an icy chill raced down my spine.

Was this sickening sensation what one felt when pinned beneath the predatory glare of a wild beast?

A man approached us at a brisk clip.

"Well, if it isn't Kai. Why, if it isn't Kai at such an hour."

His hair was neatly styled, his clothes of fine quality... Outwardly, he appeared entirely normal, like any corporate employee, yet his manner of speaking alone radiated an unsettling strangeness. Chitaira Kai retreated a step for every step he gained on us, her tightly pressed lips refusing to offer an answer. I stepped directly between Kai and the man.

"Are you... Chitaira Kai-san's father?"

Judging by the way he closed the distance, I ventured the question, only to hear a quiet murmur from behind me: "He isn't."

"Kai's father... That is quite a difficult question for us."

Already, I sensed a glaring disconnect in our conversation.

"We could answer that, but doing so would require a change in our schedule."

"......Right."

It was a bizarre, suffocating discomfort—the words were intelligible, yet no mutual understanding could be reached.

"...In that case, I would like to speak with her parents. Could you call them for me?"

Thinking this man might also be one of the people abusing Chitaira Kai, I had to keep my voice low and measured to maintain any semblance of composure. If I let my emotions run free, my tone would have sharpened into daggers.

"Very well. Please wait a moment while we select the plausible candidates from among us. This way to the drawing room."

Without bothering to ask who I was, why I was here, or even my name, the man began leading the way. Was it truly safe to follow him? His eerie eccentricity threatened to overwhelm me. But I couldn't turn around and show my anxiety to Chitaira Kai now, so I kept my eyes forward and trailed behind him. A strange odor drifted through every corner of the Chitaira estate—a distinctive, cloying floral scent. As we walked deeper into the house, it clung to my skin like a thick fog, turning my stomach.

"In here."

"...Thank you."

Even after I thanked him outside the room, the man didn't move an inch. Neither his eyes nor his neck twitched.

What is this pause? The way he stared at me without changing his expression was profoundly creepy. After standing frozen for a moment, he turned and walked away, as if giving up on whatever he had in mind.

"He was probably hesitating because you were standing between him and me, Yuki-san."

"...What does that mean?"

"Even they have self-preservation rules against casually harming outsiders, after all."

Stepping out from behind my back, Chitaira Kai kicked the drawing room door. Repeatedly, no less.

"What are you doing all of a sudden?!"

"Just making sure it swings open easily. Sit in the chair closest to the door, all right? I'm going to grab my school bag and textbooks. As soon as I'm done, I'll come right back, and then we run."

Rattling off the plan in rapid-fire succession, Chitaira Kai sprinted down the corridor facing the courtyard garden. Compared to her frantic urgency, was I being far too complacent?

Following Chitaira Kai's instructions, I took a seat in the chair closest to the doorway. The cushion was disgustingly plush, so unnervingly soft it threw me off. Even someone as uncultured as me could tell the furnishings possessed the luster of immense wealth, making me feel like a glaring foreign object out of place.

Yet I would soon learn that standing apart was an immense stroke of good fortune.

Before long, the Chitaira people filed in. In they came. And kept coming... Wait, what is this?

I had clearly asked to speak with her parents, yet every single person entering the room was a man. And they just kept pouring in, one after another.

With roughly seven men lined up side by side, even this spacious drawing room suddenly felt suffocating and overwhelmingly oppressive.

Seven against one.

It was a sickening feeling, one that made me instinctively want to bolt from my seat.

"Apologies for the wait."

The man who had greeted us earlier spoke up, acting as their representative.

"And you are... Ah, we have not yet asked for your name."

"...What is the meaning of this?"

Before introducing myself, I laced my voice with a simple, pointed question: Why on earth are there seven of you?

"Forgive our delayed introduction. Every one of us here is Father Candidate Number One for Kai."

Every single one of them wore the same plastered smile and possessed eyes of the exact same shade, watching me in unison.

Without needing Chitaira Kai to tell me, an overwhelming urge to flee washed over me.

"As for her mother, she is currently occupied entertaining the rest of us and cannot step away."

"...What do you mean by that?"

Neither statement made a shred of sense to me.

"It means precisely what it sounds like. Any further elaboration would have to be far more explicit, honored guest. Would you care to hear it?"

Though his words ended in a question, the man didn't wait for my answer before continuing.

Almost as if he were dying to spell it out.

"To put it politely, all of us engaged in sexual relations with the woman who gave birth to Kai."

"...Wh-what?"

Was this what it felt like to be struck utterly speechless? In sheer disbelief, I looked around at their faces.

Every last one of them had eyes the exact same color as Chitaira Kai's, and for some reason, it filled me with a furious disgust.

Every single face was smiling at me.

Only now did my husband's words finally come back to me.

The ones holed up inside the Chitaira estate.

Creatures that one should never, under any circumstances, get involved with.

"Consequently, none of us can determine which one of us is Kai's father."

The men casually spouted that nauseating filth with cheerful smiles on their faces.

I understood Chitaira Kai's claim that she had no parents in the absolute worst way imaginable. I finally realized why she had raised her voice. The horror behind her hatred of this house was sinking into my bones.

Addressing the one man who still seemed barely capable of human speech, I pressed on.

"Chitaira Kai-san has clearly been subjected to violence. By the people of this household."

"Ah, Kai. Indeed, Kai is ostracized from us."

Us, we, us... What is with this revolting way of speaking?

"Why would you do such a thing?"

Knowing full well it was futile, I demanded an explanation. In response, the man chanted what sounded like an incomprehensible spell.

"Kai does not blend into us. For a pure lineage of our blood, this is exceedingly rare. However, rarity holds no value for us, and foreign entities that are not part of us are classified as matters of complete indifference."

"........................"

Yeah, I'm done here, was the only thought in my head.

Any discussion about what parents should be, or about abuse—none of it would ever register with them. I understood that now.

These people were simply out of their minds.

After barely two minutes facing them, I felt like I was losing my sanity. The men behind him simply smiled without uttering a single word; their utter lack of discernible individuality was profoundly unsettling. Worse, they seemed to be gradually creeping closer to me, prompting me to rest my hands on the armrests of my chair.

Ready to push up and spring to my feet at a moment's notice.

"And so, what was it you wished to discuss with us concerning Kai?"

"Oh, that...? Never mind. I was mistaken."

It had been a harsh lesson in the sheer futility of what I had attempted to do.

I'm leaving.

A pair of small, hurried footsteps halted outside the room, and the door was violently kicked open.

Clutching her school bag to her chest, Chitaira Kai rushed in out of breath, paying no mind to anyone else as she grabbed my hand. Then, between ragged gasps, she squeezed out a voice as hard and tight as packed snow.

"Let's run!"

What surged through Chitaira Kai's hand in that instant was pure, raw desperation.

Politeness, manners, propriety...

Every single shackle fell away in the face of our promise. Kicking my chair over, I bolted into a sprint.

Behind our two sets of pounding footsteps, another immediately gave chase.

From the drawing room, a man chased after us, wearing a hideous, unhinged grin that provoked nothing short of visceral revulsion. A different man from the one I had spoken to—one who had stood closest to the doorway—charged forward, rapidly closing the gap between us. Disgusting! was the first and only thought that screamed through my mind.

How could a creature like this be allowed to exist? In the same town, inside such a pristine manor?

The instant the man's fingers grabbed fistfuls of my hair, something snapped inside me far faster than the strands ever could.

Immediately after he yanked it, a sudden jolt.

Memories long shelved away tilted, came crashing down, and struck the man full force.

"I'll kill you, you bastard!" someone roared, searing pain ripping through the hinge of my jaw as if it were about to crack in two.

It was me.

And now, the man was rolling across the floor, clutching his ribs. I had spun on my heel and kicked him with all my might. The strike had landed cleanly by sheer luck... and just like back then, the person on the receiving end was squirming in agony.

Sweat erupted across my forehead and back.

"Don't worry about him!" Chitaira Kai shouted, tugging my hand, and throwing every shred of sensible restraint out the window, I ran with her. No one else gave chase, and following Kai's lead, we tore through the manor straight toward the front entrance.

In the entryway, my shoes and Chitaira Kai's sat neatly side by side. And somehow having cut us off, the man who had first greeted us was standing there. He made no move to block our path, remaining off to the side of the entrance.

"Ah, rest assured. The rest of us have no intention of pursuing Kai."

"What the hell is wrong with you peop—" The man kicked Chitaira Kai across the room. What?

Following a train of thought no sane human could ever trace, he delivered a vicious kick straight to her stomach. Chitaira Kai's feet lifted effortlessly off the ground, sending her flying through the air before her back slammed hard against the floor. A split-second delay passed before I could process what he had done, what had just happened, and in that agonizing beat, the surging torrent of blood pounded so furiously that I could hear something snap behind my throbbing temples.

Why he had kicked her, what possible reason he could have had—none of it mattered anymore. Blood vessels ruptured one after another at the sheer atrocity of the act, and with my vision flashing crimson from internal hemorrhage, my feet surged forward to tear into him.

"Forget it! Hurry, we have to go!"

Still on her knees, Chitaira Kai dug her nails desperately into my hand, holding me back. The sharp pain of her nails caused the blood boiling in my skull to recede slightly. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least if blood were pouring from my dilated pores instead of sweat. Ragged, wheezing breaths hissed through the gaps between my teeth from sheer, overdrive adrenaline.

I shoved my feet into my shoes without once taking my eyes off the man. If he made another move, I couldn't guarantee what I would do to him.

"A magnificent display of violence. Even among us, few possess such sharpness."

"If you lay another finger on this child, I will kill you."

I pulled Chitaira Kai close, holding her shoulder tight against me. The man looked back with the same eyes as Kai—as if this piece of shit could ever have the same eyes as her. "Die, die, die, go die," a vicious curse spilled past my grinding teeth.

"Kai, our disappointing child who cannot blend into us. Even so, may you—"

"Shut your damn mouth and drop dead, you idiot!"

Spitting out those words, I supported Chitaira Kai as we bolted out of the house. I refused to waste another second dealing with him.

"I'm fine. This happens all the time."

"No, it's not fine! I hate it. It's disgusting, and it pisses me off!"

Chitaira Kai clutched her stomach, and by the end, I was practically carrying her on my back, paying no mind to the strain on my lower back as I kept running.

With my feet soaked from the rain splashing up off the ground, I reached the car and set her down, only to find Chitaira Kai smiling with quiet satisfaction. Even though my own stomach was churning hot enough to scorch me from the inside out.

My lungs were pushed to their limit, a sharp cramp stabbing into my side from the sudden sprint. Not caring about the grime, I propped an elbow against the car to catch my breath. The delayed backlash of everything we'd just survived brought a wave of nausea rushing up my throat, and forgetting all about looking pathetic, I doubled over, panting raggedly.

Oh, come on... My vision blurred, as if I had submerged my face in water.

"Your stomach... Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, but... were you scared enough to cry?"

"No."

I rubbed my eyes vigorously with my sleeve and clenched my back teeth to stop any more tears from spilling over.

"Living in a horrific environment like that, you could have died in an 'accident' at any moment... But you're alive. I was just thinking... thank God you're alive."

Nothing about this was fine, but even so, the realization had brought fresh tears welling up.

"...You're right. And I got to meet you, Yuki-san."

Chitaira Kai didn't cry with me. Smiling as she always did, she seemed to celebrate the simple fact that we had met. Seeing her rejoice—as if laying her palm over mine and saying she was glad she had lived because it brought us together—threatened to bring me to tears all over again. This time, a different kind of tear, welling up with a completely different warmth.

Telling myself this was no time to stand around crying, I lifted my head.

"That doesn't have much to do with anything right now, though."

"That was incredible, Yuki-san. That spin kick of yours."

I could feel her envious, admiring gaze, practically radiating reverence. That's what you took away from that?! I felt a flush of embarrassment at having laid bare what was nothing more than a raw surge of primal instinct.

"That was just... having my hair grabbed made me remember something from back then."

A long time ago, when some persistent creep wouldn't leave me alone, I'd lost my temper just like that, spun around, and...

It became a massive incident.

"Huh... So you've really grown up, Yuki-san."

"Meaning what?"

"When you slapped me, you apologized afterward."

"Don't bring that up again. Hurry up and get in."

Talking with her helped me settle down considerably, and the nausea subsided.

At my urging, Chitaira Kai climbed into the passenger seat and tossed her school bag into the back. I followed her lead, throwing mine back there as well.

With her hands free, Chitaira Kai stretched out her limbs. Watching her do that helped ease some of the tension from my own shoulders. No, it's too soon for that. Knowing we had to put as much distance between us and that house as possible, I put the car in gear. I couldn't help craning around to confirm that no one was following us.

"Don't worry. They rarely ever step outside the house."

"What are they, monsters or something...?"

At the very least, they weren't human. They fell completely outside the category of any human being I knew. Chitaira Kai had been right all along, and it amazed me that she had grown up into someone who could actually communicate and make herself understood. She had mentioned a surrogate parent; perhaps it was thanks to that person.

Yet in the end, had that person never truly intended to save Kai from the roots either?

As I kept driving without any destination in mind, Chitaira Kai murmured softly.

"What should we do now?"

"I wonder..."

Even when asked, I had no answer. I had moved entirely without thinking.

All I possessed was the stubborn resolve that giving up was not an acceptable answer. Taking her back to that house was simply out of the question—that didn't even warrant consideration. With that path closed off, there was only one remaining road, maybe two.

One was bringing her back to my house, explaining the situation, and letting her stay the night.

The other was putting Chitaira Kai up in a hotel for the time being.

If I told my husband that I had caused an uproar with the Chitaira clan and brought her home, he certainly wouldn't be pleased. He might oppose it outright. Caring for our family made that a completely natural reaction, and ordinarily, I should have stood by my husband's side. If family truly came first. Even now, that was how it was supposed to be.

Yet I knew I would take Chitaira Kai's side instead. Sympathy was clouding my common sense.

"May I speak?"

For some reason, she suddenly raised her hand with solemn formality.

"Go ahead."

Having no idea when our car ride had become a raise-your-hand affair, I gave her permission.

"For what it's worth, there are people who would probably help me stay somewhere if I asked."

"...What kind of people?"

"There are two who might help... Actually, maybe just one. They're my older cousins, and they spend the family's money however they please. Since they have practically bottomless funds at their disposal, they're reliable when it comes to finances. Besides, neither of them is the type to resort to punching and kicking."

Hearing Chitaira Kai's words, I pulled the car over to the shoulder. We might have just found a direction to drive toward.

"Are those the surrogate parents you mentioned earlier?"

"More or less. Though I'm pretty sure one of them will demand my body in exchange for helping."

"What?"

"She failed last time, so she'll probably figure this is her chance."

Chitaira Kai's... body?

Did she mean "body" in that sense?

My cheeks twisted at the bitter taste spreading over my tongue.

"Absolutely not. Out of the question. Denied."

As if brushing off something filthy that had clung to her just from speaking of it, I instinctively stroked Chitaira Kai's shoulder.

Right now, I was being protective of this child to an absolute extreme.

"Then that really leaves only one person. That nee-san is pretty much a surrogate mother to me... though personally, I think she's the absolute worst when it comes to the psychological side of things."

The word terrible came in all shapes and sizes, but glancing back toward the road we had come from, the thought of anything worse than that made me sick.

"To put it bluntly, does that mean she's insane? Even more than the people in that house?"

"Unlike the people back home, she can hold a conversation, and she actually possesses common sense. It's just... well, you can think of her as an eccentric. She doesn't cause harm to anyone outside of specific targets, so she's not the kind of person you're imagining, Yuki-san."

"And among those 'specific targets'... you're not one of them, right?"

"I'm guaranteed safe for about a year."

"A year...?"

Brushing that aside, Chitaira Kai threw a hypothetical at me, as if testing the waters.

"It's a little late to bring this up, but... what would you do if I told you I gave myself all these bruises just to get your attention, Yuki-san?"

You were just kicked halfway across the room with all his strength, I thought, dumbfounded by the absurdity of her hypothetical.

"Nothing. I'd just think, 'Thank goodness there isn't actually a child being beaten by her family.' And then I'd never speak to you again."

At my response, Chitaira Kai closed her eyes and murmured with satisfaction.

Perhaps that was her habit when revealing how she felt, or maybe just a way to hide her embarrassment.

"Then let's stick with me being legitimately assaulted."

"Stop talking nonsense and get in touch with her already. Believe it or not, I'm pretty busy myself."

"I don't have a phone. I have her number written down, though."

"Ah, right... Then use mine... No, wait, I need to call home first..."

My to-do list was piling up. Without letting go of anything, I was heaping the extraordinary right on top of my everyday routine. I could see no future other than being stretched too thin and crumbling into ruin, and yet...

I refused to be the kind of person who acted full of self-righteous grief when I hadn't done a single meaningful thing to help.

Right now, that was all that mattered.

Explaining every little detail would be a pain, so I simply claimed work had piled up. I had nothing shameful to hide, and I told myself a white lie was justified, yet hitting send on the message to my husband left an uneasy knot in my chest.

Because at the end of the day, it was still a lie. Would retribution for this deceit come back to haunt me eventually?

Once I finished sending my message, I handed Chitaira Kai my phone. She spoke to someone on the line and returned a moment later.

"Thanks for the phone."

Having finished her call a short distance away, Chitaira Kai handed the phone back to me.

"Nee-san said to meet her in a hotel lobby. Should I give you the address?"

"Give it to me and I'll plug it into the GPS... But why a hotel?"

"Apparently, she likes the atmosphere of hotels."

I entered the name Chitaira Kai gave me into the navigation system and let it map out our route.

The designated destination was a hotel situated well outside the city where we lived.

The hotel had an unusual layout, featuring a courtyard pool enclosed by the surrounding lounge and lobby. Whenever I was confronted with such an out-of-the-ordinary sight, my immediate, simpleminded impression was always that it had to be high-end. Then again, it really did look expensive.

What kind of person was waiting for us at this hotel? Chitaira Kai had called her nee-san, but...

Even though she was someone Chitaira Kai had designated, knowing she belonged to that family put my guard up even more.

"Oh, she's already here,"

In the direction Chitaira Kai pointed in the lobby stood a woman clad in a wisteria-colored yukata, a garment slightly out of season. The woman noticed us almost immediately and closed the distance between us.

She carried an aura that brought to mind someone strolling under a bright summer sky; she possessed the kind of breathtaking beauty that would make anyone facing her fall silent, ashamed of their inadequate vocabulary. Yet she wore a gentle smile that melted the hearts of those who shrank back in self-conscious awe. An unidentifiable floral fragrance drifted from the air surrounding her. From an objective standpoint, anyone would unanimously pronounce her the very pinnacle of beauty.

And as if to prove their shared bloodline, she had the exact same yellow-green eyes as Chitaira Kai.

"Hey there. And here I thought we'd never see each other again."

"Me neither, Shio-neesan,"

"Look at you, getting so big... Wait, no you haven't. Not at all. Have you grown even an inch since elementary school?"

"About two centimeters," Kai answered.

The woman in the yukata playfully rested her chin on Chitaira Kai's head. Keeping it there, the woman Chitaira Kai had called nee-san turned her gaze to me. Her sleek yellow-green irises differed from Kai's; they held the reflective gleam of still water, offering no hint of depth beneath.

"I'm Chitaira Shio."

Her easygoing, carefree grin felt as though it could leap right past my defenses and slip effortlessly into the deepest recesses of my heart.

It served as the ultimate introduction, telling me all I needed to know: this was a woman who was exceedingly good at charming people.

"I'm... well, this is me," I offered, presenting a card.

I handed her one of my business cards. Chitaira Shio glanced at it and tilted her head.

"It hurts when you move your chin, nee-san,"

"The connection between a designer and Kai doesn't immediately jump out at me," Shio mused.

"She's my friend's mother,"

"Um... and she is my daughter's friend," I added.

"Now I'm even more lost," Chitaira Shio remarked, the corners of her eyes crinkling with amusement.

"I love a good mystery. Standing around talking is a bit awkward, so why don't we sit down over there?"

With practiced familiarity, she headed toward a corner of the lobby. Rubbing her head, Chitaira Kai followed after her, and I brought up the rear.

As we walked, Chitaira Shio spoke up.

"You've gotten quite cheerful, Kai."

"Are you really saying that after looking at my face?"

Even when Chitaira Kai lifted her bangs to reveal the athletic tape, Chitaira Shio only smiled wider.

"You look like you're having fun, Kai."

"I'm full of pep, for once."

...What is wrong with these people?

They were casually showing off the physical aftermath of violence while having a cheerful conversation. I couldn't keep up.

We took our seats in wooden chairs, facing Chitaira Shio across a square table. The fact that Chitaira Kai had chosen the seat next to mine as if it were the most natural thing in the world gave me a quiet, secret flutter of joy.

I explained everything that had happened today to Chitaira Shio. While she listened to that with evident amusement, she didn't even try to hide the fact that she was merely nodding along half-heartedly to my complaints regarding the Chitaira family's issues. Afterward, I also gave her an outline of the relationship between Chitaira Kai and myself, glossing over the unnecessary details. I spent the entire time in quiet dread that Chitaira Kai might interject, but she remained completely silent. It almost felt as if she were testing how I perceived our relationship.

"In short, Kai, you want to leave home?" Shio asked.

"We can't possibly send her back to a house like that," I cut in.

When I chimed in, Chitaira Shio hummed with amusement. "'A house like that' is certainly one way to put it."

"Still, 'a house like that' is the only home Kai has."

Even beneath her calm, mild delivery, flashes of cynicism showed through. Chitaira Kai had called her a surrogate mother, and their demeanors were remarkably alike. Perhaps being the source made her even more twisted.

"Kai. Do you want to leave home?"

She asked again, directing the question to Chitaira Kai this time. Chitaira Kai replied, "I don't know."

"Excuse me?" I gasped.

Just as I was thinking she couldn't possibly be saying that now of all times, Chitaira Kai continued.

"I don't know. I don't really know what the point of doing this is. But... I want to believe that what I'm trying to do right now might actually lead to something."

In Chitaira Kai's voice—usually as soft and fleeting as light snow—I detected a faint, resolute core. Alongside Chitaira Shio, I watched as she peered deep into the whirlwind inside her chest, doing her best to convey whatever she saw reflected there.

"That's why, Shio-neesan... I need your help."

Chitaira Kai bowed her head in earnest plea. Uncertain whether I should bow along with her, I silently looked on.

In contrast, Chitaira Shio's reply was breezy and detached.

"Sure. If you want to live out on your own, Kai, that's probably for the best. I'll cover the expenses."

It was a frivolous affirmation, carrying a simultaneous air of respect and total indifference.

"Um..." Glancing down at the card I'd handed her, she read, "Amamiya Setsu-san?"

"It's Setsu."

"Set-san?"

"Still not quite right."

"Kai, could you give Amamiya-san and me a moment alone?"

"Are you telling me to leave the table?"

Chitaira Shio offered a smile in lieu of an answer. "Make it brief, please," Kai said as she stood and walked toward the edge of the lobby. Watching her go, I couldn't help but feel a pang at how frail and vulnerable her small back looked.

"Never thought I'd see Kai acting so docile," Shio commented. "Looks like she's eager to play the innocent kitten."

"Docile?" I echoed.

"She's trying to be a good girl in front of you. Surprisingly touching, honestly."

"That counts as docile...?" I muttered.

A part of me wanted to scoff, In what world? while another part conceded she might have a point, the two thoughts clashing in an unequal struggle. When my eyes met Chitaira Kai's in the distance, it felt as though the distant beam of a lighthouse had suddenly swiveled to focus entirely on me, giving me a jolt of alarm. Making excuses to myself that now wasn't the time to be staring at each other, I looked away and faced Chitaira Shio again.

Looking at her head-on like this, I couldn't shake a strange impression. Even though I was significantly older than she was, Chitaira Shio carried an aura that made her feel far more seasoned by the years, radiating a presence that felt almost overbearing.

"Well then. Once again, I'm Chitaira Shio. Has Kai told you anything about me?"

"She referred to you as her surrogate mother," I replied.

"Well, didn't she keep things terribly safe?"

Her lips curled, but I couldn't tell what she was dissatisfied with.

"Were you surprised when you went to the Chitaira house? Seeing as every last one of them has the exact same eye color."

"Like this, see?" Chitaira Shio pointed to her own eyes.

"Yes. Well... I certainly felt a distinct sense of pressure."

"Anyone who carries Chitaira blood will invariably manifest these eyes—or so they say. There are no exceptions. Genetics aren't my field of expertise, so I can't speak to the science of it, but I have given some thought to what these eyes signify."

"Meaning...?" I prompted.

"I believe it's an intimidation display and a warning. By signaling that any creature bearing these eyes is dangerous, it keeps others in check, allowing the people around them to heed the warning and stay away. I suspect it evolved as that kind of brand. There's no scientific proof for it, of course—just my personal take."

"..."

It sounded plausible enough, but inwardly, I rejected the notion. There was an exception to every rule.

After all, far from running away, I found myself helplessly drawn to Chitaira Kai's eyes.

"And that ties right into the real problem: people with Chitaira blood don't just inherit the eyes—they inherit an inhuman nature as well. There are no exceptions to that rule, as I know from firsthand experience. That goes for me, and it goes for Kai too. Kai is by no means the innocent child you think she is. Take that as my word of advice."

Her advice—likely offered with what passed for Chitaira Shio's version of good faith—wasn't entirely incomprehensible, especially considering her own lived experiences. When I thought back to the people in that mansion, I knew she wasn't lying.

Even so, hearing her disparage Chitaira Kai like that... was anything but pleasant.

As if to drive the point home, Chitaira Shio spoke up.

"At the end of the day, Kai is still a child born to that family."

"I'd expect nothing less from Shio-neesan. You know me all too well."

The sudden voice from behind made me whirl around in alarm. Chitaira Kai, who was supposed to be keeping her distance, was standing right behind us. Chitaira Shio merely smiled, as though she had anticipated this all along.

"I told you to wait over there," Shio said.

"Did you honestly think I had the kind of personality to follow orders like that?"

At Chitaira Kai's utterly unrepentant retort, I chided, "What are you talking about?"

"Personality has nothing to do with it—stop acting without common sense."

Kai, who had been wearing a cynically smug expression, froze at the unexpected scolding.

"Common courtesy is something anyone can learn, regardless of their nature. Don't blame your personality—you were just being lazy and inconsiderate. Now reflect on what you did and go back over there."

When I firmly pointed that out and gave my instruction, Chitaira Kai pursed her lips in sullen reluctance. It was the exact reaction of a scolded child.

"...I can't think of a good counterargument, so fine."

"Never mind counterarguments—just listen to what you're told."

Giving her back a gentle push, I watched Chitaira Kai retreat all the way back to where she'd been standing earlier. Honestly, how on earth had Shio called her docile? I shot a glare at Chitaira Shio. For that matter, there were plenty of things about this woman that rubbed me the wrong way, calm and composed smile notwithstanding.

"And that goes for you, too."

"Pardon?"

As Chitaira Shio tilted her head inquisitively, I pressed her.

"You knew that Chitaira Kai was being physically abused on a daily basis in that house, didn't you?"

"Sure did. If anything, I was on the receiving end of those beatings myself back in the day."

Then why—! I felt fangs baring within me, practically ready to snap at her throat.

"You knew, and yet you just abandoned her."

"Ah, so that's what this is," Chitaira Shio nodded, as though only just catching my drift. Seeing her utter lack of remorse, I felt a fundamental rift between us as living beings, along with a boiling fury that crackled and sparked in my eyes.

"Even if you didn't take part in it directly... I'm this close to losing my temper with you."

Just as she had claimed, the woman sitting before me truly was inhuman.

It was precisely because she possessed a heart that wasn't human that she could keep a perfectly straight face when confronted with such blatant outrage.

"I love it."

Chitaira Shio clapped her hands together with a broad, beaming grin that stretched from ear to ear.

"What do you mean?"

"You look like you'd belong at a teacher's podium far more than in a design studio."

"Excuse me?"

"Amamiya-san, you can forget everything I just said about Kai. For now."

"...I'd appreciate it if you didn't brush off what I just said, though."

Ignoring my objection entirely, Chitaira Shio bowed her head deeply, just as Kai had done moments earlier.

"Please take good care of Kai."

"Ah... Yes..."

The sheer speed with which she dropped her argument and shifted to a polite greeting completely took the wind out of my sails.

I understood that venting my indignation about the Chitaira family on her wouldn't accomplish a thing. There was zero resonance. This woman had no concern whatsoever for the family, nor for Chitaira Kai. I realized that asserting my emotions to someone like her was an utter exercise in futility.

"Oh, but if you have a daughter, that means you're married?"

Lifting her head, she asked for clarification on something that seemed completely beside the point.

"Yes. One husband, one daughter, and one dog in my household."

"Is that so... Well, whatever. Having a dog sounds lovely."

"Does it...?"

"Kai, c'mon over~!"

Chitaira Shio beckoned to Chitaira Kai across the room. It felt as though she were summoning Chitaira Kai like a dog, which irritated me a little. Apparently, I couldn't stand seeing anyone treat Chitaira Kai roughly. Perhaps that was due to seeing her wounds, or maybe it was the shared bond and sense of solidarity from helping her escape the Chitaira manor.

"Are you finished talking?" Chitaira Kai asked.

"I just told her to look after our girl here."

Standing side by side like this, their eyes were the exact same shade, yet there was an undeniable difference in what dwelled within them.

What I perceived in Chitaira Shio's gaze was shallow. It was nothing like the bottomless swamp in Chitaira Kai's eyes.

...What was it that surfaced in Chitaira Kai's eyes whenever she looked at me?

"Oh, Shio-neesan, can I ask for one more thing?"

"Hm?"

"Help me get a smartphone contract."

"Oh, you don't have one yet? In that case, I'll just give you one of mine. Feel free to use it however you like. Just ignore any incoming calls from numbers already saved on it."

"You haven't changed a bit, Nee-san."

Powering on the phone she'd received, Chitaira Kai tilted her head, then slipped it into her bag for the time being.

I might need to teach her how to use it later, I thought.

"Still, to think you came running to me first. Wouldn't Kaku have been easier to talk to? She's basically an idiot who acts without thinking."

"I did consider that, but I figured that as long as the other person wasn't a high school girl, Shio-neesan would help me out without overthinking it."

"Ahaha! Fair point."

"Besides, if I asked Kaku-neesan for help, she'd probably try to violate me."

"Excuse me?!"

Listening from the side, such a sudden and alarming topic made my jaw drop in disbelief.

She had mentioned something along those lines before, but the phrasing was far too graphic.

"Didn't she only attempt it last time?"

"Barely,"

"Good on you for holding out, considering the massive size difference. Or should I say Kaku is just pathetic?"

What kind of conversation were they having with such cheery expressions? Even though I was sitting right there with them in the lobby, I averted my gaze, desperately wishing I could pretend to be a total stranger.

"Kai, should I recommend a hotel for you to stay at? It'll be easier to arrange things at a place where I know someone."

Chitaira Kai looked up at me, silently consulting me with her eyes. I briefly wondered if this hotel might work, but it was probably much too far from Chitaira Kai's school. When I nodded, Chitaira Kai accepted the offer.

"Could you, please?"

"Alrighty. Well then, Amamiya-san, shall we get going?"

Swept along in the wake of Chitaira Shio's solitary cheerfulness, we left the hotel.

My daughter's friend and her relative... It was an endlessly perplexing combination of people for me to be accompanying. I felt as if I were swimming out into the open sea while leaving my family behind on the sandy shore. I'd drifted so far that swimming back, or even reaching land anywhere, was such a daunting distance that sheer exhaustion threatened to paralyze my arms and legs.

Once I saw Chitaira Kai settled into her hotel... would I finally be able to breathe a little easier?

Exhausted in both body and mind, all I wanted was to put a swift end to this day.

Perhaps it was because I had indulged in the naive hope that things would get easier once we reached the hotel.

As my car followed Chitaira Shio's navigation, a mounting sense of déjà vu washed over me. Even so, right up until I parked, stepped out of the car, and left the hotel parking lot, I clung to the hope that my memory was playing tricks on me.

After all, it had been nearly fifteen years, so it was entirely possible I was mistaken. But when I breathed in the salt-laden sea breeze and stopped in my tracks, I was forced to realize that faint possibility was nothing more than the product of a weak heart wishing for an easy way out.

The faded photograph lingering in my mind matched the nighttime view of the hotel perfectly.

"Ah..."

I shielded my eyes with a hand, as if grains of sand carried on the wind had blown into them.

Did such a thing as karma truly exist in this world?

This hotel Chitaira Shio had led us to was one I knew.

Memories resurfaced of pledging my love in a glass-walled chapel looking out on nothing but the sea and sky.

This was the hotel where I had held my wedding ceremony.

"Yuki-san?"

"...Coming."

Shaking off the illusion that the diverging paths of my life were converging, I braced against the headwind and started walking.

And so.

After finalizing a long-term contract with the hotel, Chitaira Shio promptly departed.

"Given my position, it feels strange for me to be saying this, but... thank you very much."

"Not at all. And allow me to say this in advance, but... I'm sorry."

At the time, I had no idea what she was apologizing for.

Informed by the front desk that our room was on the third floor, we headed over to the door matching the number on the card key. It turned out Chitaira Shio had booked the finest accommodation available—a suite, no less—meaning Kai had two whole rooms at her disposal despite staying alone. Just inside the entryway, a spacious restroom lay immediately to the right, and stepping a bit farther revealed a large television and a sofa for viewing. By the window sat a dining table with chairs for four, with a balcony visible just outside the glass to the left. Moving through to the right led to a bedroom equal in size to the living area, featuring twin beds so wide I wondered how many Chitaira Kais could lie across them side by side. This room also had a sofa arranged by the window, positioned perfectly for taking in the view. Farther in were the vanity and bathroom, and that vanity was exceptionally wide—spacious enough for two people to use at the same time with room to spare. There was a leaflet explaining that the bathtub was equipped with a jet bath function; after reading it aloud, I took in the scent of the wood-paneled bathroom, savoring a share of its crisp, refreshing air.

"It's a wonderful room. I almost want to live here myself."

"Want to move in together?"

"You've got to be kidding me."

Living in a place without my husband or daughter was the last thing I wanted. Having finished looking around, I sank onto the bedroom sofa and set my things down, whereupon the exhaustion I had been keeping at bay clung to me all at once like heavy mud. Lacking any education in art, I didn't recognize the painting hanging above the bed, but it seemed to depict the nearby coastline and the surrounding town.

Chitaira Kai tossed the bag and change of clothes she had brought from home onto the right-hand bed and sat down on the left. With only the bedside lamp switched on, our faces were cast in soft light and gentle shadows. Yet even that modest glow was enough. More than enough to gaze into Chitaira Kai's vivid eyes.

"I never thought I'd spend the entire day with you, Yuki-san."

"I can't even remember the last time I rushed around this much either..."

The work I had squeezed in throughout the day had completely vanished from my memory. Would I even manage tomorrow?

My body and mind felt heavy, as if I had been pelted anew by the rain that should have dried long ago.

"You're very caring. As expected of a mother of one, I suppose."

"...Not really. I just hated the thought that if I left you to fend for yourself, it'd end up consuming my thoughts every single day."

"I think that's what people call being caring and responsible."

"Oh, really? Maybe so~."

I brushed off her praise, sounding almost as if her own twisted personality had rubbed off on me.

"Shio-neesan provided living expenses for the time being, too."

"Well then, it sounds like you don't have a single problem."

She had nothing but problems. This was merely a temporary shelter to buy time, far from a solid base of operations.

It was a house of straw that would collapse the moment society or anyone around her intervened.

"I can't live here forever, though... Do you have any thoughts on what to do?"

"None. But I couldn't let you go back to that house tonight."

Once I knew the truth, I couldn't simply look away. Even knowing it wasn't a fundamental solution, there were times when you had no choice but to take action. In fact, wasn't that what most of life was like?

"So... I'm thinking about it. I'll keep thinking about what to do... probably for a long time."

Ah. In the end, my head really is going to be completely filled with thoughts of my daughter's friend, isn't it?

Whether I stepped back or pressed forward.

"I haven't really thought about anything at all, personally."

"It's your own life we're talking about here."

"I suppose so," Chitaira Kai said with a giggle, falling back onto the bed. She threw her hands up in mock surrender.

To be fair, even if Chitaira Kai tried to do something, there wasn't much she could accomplish. The same went for me.

I felt like throwing my hands up in surrender too.

"Um."

"Yeees, what is it?"

Growing a little dismissive, I propped my cheek on my hand against the sofa's backrest.

"When you call me, could you just call me Kai?"

Pulling my hand away at once, I leaned forward. With Chitaira Kai lying flat on the bed, it was hard to read her expression.

"To tell the truth, I hate my surname."

Still lying down and staring at the ceiling, Chitaira Kai revealed her true feelings in her usual roundabout way.

...Ah, I thought.

Perhaps I had finally earned this girl's trust.

"Kai."

Accepting her heartfelt introduction, I spoke her name.

"Yes."

"...Kai."

The situation hadn't truly been resolved in the slightest. We were merely postponing the problem.

Even so, just speaking Kai's name in the dim light gave me the illusion of having achieved something. Intoxication mingling with fatigue. Both filled my body with a sensation akin to drowsiness.

I felt a strange joy in the fact that Kai had bared a piece of her heart to me.

"When you call me that, Yuki-san, somehow... it doesn't seem like such a bad name after all. Strange, isn't it?"

"I told you, it's not Yuki-san... Well, whatever. Let's let it slide for today."

Kai slid off the bed and walked over to me. Before I could ask what she was doing, she placed a hand on my shoulder, tipped up my chin, and closed the distance between us with practiced ease. Her bent knees, those yellow-green eyes swallowing me whole, and the tickle of lips like a brush of feathers.

"..."

Kai had kissed me again. It was only for a split second before she pulled away, but still.

There was no mistaking that our lips had touched. That soundless overlap sent ripples coursing through my heart.

Kai smiled, her hand still resting on my shoulder.

"This one was just affection."

"Hey..."

I felt as if someone were shoving me from behind, urging me to say something quickly. So I did, but nothing followed.

"Thank you, truly... really."

Hanging her head as if to hide her face, Kai's voice trembled.

Her shoulders and outstretched arms, extended like bridges, shivered slightly.

"..."

How should I put it?

Was I just a corrupted adult for thinking what I was thinking right now?

"Aren't you faking it?"

Kai instantly stopped trembling. Yeah, that shivering had been entirely too theatrical. Or rather, just plain terrible.

She was shaking way too much.

Perhaps giving up, Kai smoothly lifted her head. As expected, there wasn't a single tear on her face.

"I really am grateful, though."

"Said with a completely straight face."

With her face so close to mine, feigning composure was no easy task for me either.

Like an ancient structure miraculously keeping its shape while battered by harsh winds, there was a breathtaking beauty to her. It made my heart pray that she wouldn't be tormented by the wind and rain any longer. Kai's eyes were simply magnificent.

Perhaps she was so terrible at pretending to cry because she had never actually cried in her life.

"Don't go... kissing me like that without permission."

"So it's fine if I have permission?"

"Of course not, you idiot."

"Checkmate."

What a pity, Kai seemed to say as she closed her eyes in disappointment. But a moment later, she moved in close once more.

Wary of her lips, I tried to pull back, only for her to catch hold of me, wrapping herself around my body.

"Do I need permission to hug you too?"

"Don't ask after you've already done it..."

The scent wafting from Kai as we pressed against each other was dry. It was likely the smell of her school uniform.

"I'll let it slide for today, though."

Hesitating again and again, in the end I wrapped my arms around Kai's waist. Placing a palm against her back, I embraced her.

Her prominent bones called to mind bleached coral. She was so thin that it made total sense why having her lean against my shoulder wasn't the least bit strenuous. Becoming conscious of her immature body, I wondered what this sensation was—nothing flamboyant in my chest, yet steadily, undeniably pulsing with a powerful rhythm.

How amazing, I thought. Though I had no idea what was so amazing about it.

From here, I would pretend I had stayed late finishing up work, return home, and spend time with my family as if nothing had happened. I thought of that as amazing, almost as though it were someone else's life. In the end, what was so amazing remained unclear. There would be no full stop put to things in this room; I had my own life, and having to return to it was perhaps... what was truly amazing.

Locked in our embrace, Kai murmured as if talking to herself.

"Hǎo... zhēn hǎo."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Kai didn't answer, merely shaking her shoulders with a quiet chuckle.

[TN: In the raw Japanese text, this line has Chinese characters without Japanese ruby gloss. In Mandarin Chinese, hǎo (好) means "good" or "fine," and zhēn hǎo (真好) translates to "so very good," "truly wonderful," or "this feels so nice."

I remember this day well.

The day Chitaira Kai became "Kai."

The day she became "Kai" to me and me alone.

It was something I would never forget, and yet there are things about it I can no longer recall.

Just when was it that I began to be drawn to Kai?

Was it when I meddled in her family circumstances? When I squeezed her trembling hand? When she kissed me?

Or was it the moment I looked into those eyes of hers?

Had I really tried to save Kai back then out of nothing more than sympathy, chivalry, and pity?

Now, with far too many memories of Kai piled high upon each other, I can no longer fish out the answer.

And looking back on it now...

There hadn't been a single lie in Chitaira Shio's warning.

So much had happened. In bed, my tangled thoughts were far more fragmented than usual. Like endless threads racing vertically through my head, they gave me no peace, keeping sleep at bay despite how exhausted I was.

The heat coursing through my head simply wouldn't fade.

Unable to wake my husband sleeping beside me, all I could do was lie there awake, watching those lines of thought rain down like the afterimages of falling water. The threads were so thin and fleeting that I couldn't grasp a single one, making it impossible even to pass the time by thinking them through.

Tomorrow would be an early morning. In fact, from now on, waking up and leaving for work would both have to be earlier than usual.

Shifting even a single piece of the daily routine I had painstakingly assembled brought discomfort and tension. It might truly be an infinitesimally small change. Yet it made me foreign. It turned me, ever so slightly, into someone else. If I kept repeating this, would I eventually end up an entirely different person in the end?

I couldn't help but wish that tomorrow were a Saturday at the very least. Without any pause, tomorrow could not escape being the continuation of today. There would be no spending the day forgetting about Kai.

Kai. Chitaira Kai. My daughter's friend. Alien eyes. An abused child. And then... nothing else.

Had my actions today really been the right thing to do? How much responsibility could I truly shoulder? Had poking my nose into a case for child welfare services really been the best course of action? The deeper I thought about it, the more regret and self-reproach threatened to overwhelm me. Because this was a problem stemming from an environment so blatantly detached from an ordinary family, an everyday person like me had no business handling it. Even so, I was already involved. I had already taken action. There was no turning back now.

For the most part, I believed it was a good deed. What it meant for Kai to remain in that house was something I simply could not overlook.

Yet looking after Kai while keeping it a secret from my husband and daughter... was still a deception, and it sat terribly with me. I considered coming clean about everything, but since what I was doing was unquestionably eccentric, I couldn't imagine them understanding. Besides, I didn't want my family having anything to do with that household known as the Chitairas. Something was deeply wrong with them. Feeling a sense of relief that I was still capable of recognizing how twisted they were, I prayed for my family's peace.

People said Kai belonged to that household too, but... it was precisely because Kai couldn't adjust to their abnormalities that she had been subjected to such treatment. Probably. Chitaira Shio had said something along those lines as well. Kai wasn't straightforward, but her core sensibilities were by no means alien. Well, even if she did suddenly kiss me out of nowhere.

Her kiss hadn't shaken me as much as the last time. It had only been for a fleeting moment, and perhaps the emotion behind it truly had been affection. It felt almost like pressing lips with my daughter... No, kissing an eighth-grade daughter would be embarrassing for both of us, hardly something casual.

Right, exactly, so it was no big deal. It was just a form of communication. As if searching for the breath breathed into me when Kai kissed me, my tongue threatened to move, but I checked myself.

A middle school girl had kissed me out of affection like that. Blurted out to my husband out of the blue, it would only breed chaos, I thought, peering at his sleeping face beside me. My husband knew nothing of my little adventure today. Even though, up until now, I had almost never kept a single secret from him.

Meeting Kai had cast a shadow over my heart, and within that shadow, things had begun to be placed so they wouldn't be discovered. If they gradually multiplied until they could no longer fit in the shadows, what would become of me?

While everything else grew hazy, thoughts of Kai gathered like falling rain, pooling together into puddles. It seemed my brain cells, having shaped Kai in my mind, were thoroughly dissatisfied with my constant evasions.

Enough about Kai. Let's get some rest. I silently pleaded with my restless mind to accept the gestures of my surrender.

Closing my eyes, I sorted through what I needed to do tomorrow.

Naturally, Kai's name was right there on the list. Should I just erase it altogether?

Without any warning, I could cut all ties with Kai. Stop seeing her. Stop going to visit her. Feign total indifference even if she showed up at my house. If I did that, perhaps I could return to the days before I ever knew Kai existed.

That's for the best. That's what I'll do.

I'll just forget about Kai completely.

"Fine by me, but..."

Surely.

Nothing about it was fine, yet for some reason, that murmur slipped past my lips.

I wanted to fall asleep quickly and forget it all. To forget what had threatened to surge up within me when I pulled on Kai's arm.

Kai had seemed like an inscrutable enigma, and had indeed toyed with me, yet she was actually overwhelmingly frail. The slenderness of her wrists, the dark thrill of realizing her resistance would be utterly powerless if I pinned her down—I wanted to wipe that away before Kai ever realized it. Having feelings like that made me no different from the monsters hurting her. I couldn't help but despise myself. I loathed the fact that I had felt even a fleeting sense of dominance over her. I wanted to cast it away. That was why I wanted to fall asleep quickly and pretend none of it had ever happened.

I was tired. Deeply tired. And tomorrow, after another unfamiliar day, I would surely be even more thoroughly exhausted.

Living just to be worn out... the thought disgusted me before the day had even begun.

Fine by me, I almost murmured once more.

It wasn't fine. What was so awful about it was that every time I went to see Kai at that hotel from now on, the memories of my wedding ceremony with my husband threatened to be overwritten.

The reluctance was real, and it ran deep.

Morning arrived—a brand-new day, with something unfamiliar shoved into the routine I had already built.

"Urggh... Look at you, early bird."

Woken up by my alarm as well, my husband checked the time before burying his face right back into the pillow.

"I wanted to head into work a little early today."

"Didn't you just say the most admirable thing in the entire world?"

"Things are just a bit hectic at the office."

A foul prickle of guilt shook the sleep right out of my eyes.

Lying first thing in the morning already sat heavy in my stomach. Why was I lying to my husband just to go see Kai? No answer came to mind, so I decided to finish getting ready before dwelling on it.

"Well... guess I'd better drag myself up too."

"You can stay in bed, you know."

"Nah, come on. Heh-heh."

Struggling out from under the covers, he rolled out of bed and ran a hand through his flattened bangs.

"Gotta make your breakfast, after all."

"...Thank you."

My husband's kindness cut deep, prodding at my love for my family and my festering guilt in two entirely different ways.

The early morning air had lost all warmth, and stepping out into the hallway, the chill of the floorboards felt biting. Autumn was withering away. Having a name tied to winter, I had never been particularly fond of the season.

"I was hoping to show off my professional chops, but looks like we're out of rice."

Laughing heartily, he popped some bread into the toaster. He always woke up so quickly. Unlike me, he greeted every morning with cheerful optimism—something I found both enviable and blinding. Meanwhile, I quietly went about taking care of the rest.

I set out yogurt for two, but the breakfast he brought over was only for one.

"I'll eat with our daughter once she's up. It's always nicer having breakfast together than eating alone."

"Fair enough. Thanks for breakfast, then."

Clasping my hands together, the thought suddenly crossed my mind: What is Kai going to do for breakfast?

"A bit early for the year-end rush, isn't it? Is work really that busy?"

He asked the question casually as he watched me spread butter over my toast.

As I looked up to answer, I felt an illusion like someone was tugging at my hair from behind.

"If by busy you mean the usual grind, I suppose so."

"Knowing you, your 'usual grind' is probably pretty demanding."

"It's not really any different from anyone else, which is why it's such a pain..."

Because I hadn't been paying attention, I ended up slathering on far more butter than usual. Since there was no putting it back, I took a bite as it was. The rich aroma and flavor of the melted butter yielded lavishly as my teeth sank into the bread. The taste of so much excess butter was intensely decadent, reverberating all the way to my brain. The flavor of transgression—that was probably the best way to describe it.

With that richness filling my mouth, my gaze drifted aimlessly into the distance. A detached voice reached my ears, as though my throat and brain had been completely disconnected from each other.

"I think I'll be running a little late tonight too, so please go ahead and have dinner without me."

"Nah, don't worry about it—I'll wait up for you."

I really wished he wouldn't. For the sake of my own mental sanity, if nothing else. But faced with his warm smile, I found it impossible to press the issue.

"I'm sorry. Making you handle everything around the house..."

"Don't sweat it. Go get 'em."

Without a shred of suspicion, my husband sent me off with nothing but cheerful encouragement.

It wasn't as if I was doing anything that betrayed anyone... right? At least, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it.

Yet if I had to go through departures like this every single day from now on, would I eventually stop feeling this ache? As for whether I actually intended to keep this up every day—I would think about that later. That pile of things to deal with later was steadily getting out of hand.

After finishing breakfast and getting dressed, I stepped into the garage and slipped into the driver's seat. Starting up the car, I listened to the navigation system announce whatever holiday or observance today was while I programmed a new destination into it. Even though I already knew the way, I figured having it guide me wouldn't hurt.

I pulled out of the driveway. Giving a small wave to my husband, who had stepped out to the front door to see me off, I left home.

The fact that I wasn't heading straight to work kept my heart from settling down. For reasons entirely different from excitement, my chest thudded and I could hardly sit still. I told myself not to dwell on that lingering discomfort until I got used to it. Push that back, push this back. Put off every doubt and dilemma that cropped up as I drove—think about it later, think about it later—until I'd brushed aside so much that I had nothing left to think about right now. It seemed I had to face at least one of them right this second. Wondering which one to tackle, I rounded the corner past the ramen shop and merged onto the coastal road. Since I usually only drove through the city center, cruising along the coastline bathed in the morning sun felt refreshingly novel. Farther offshore, the sails of early-morning windsurfers swayed like flags in the breeze. The dazzling glare reflecting off the water was so bright that I made a mental note to bring a pair of sunglasses when taking this road on the way back.

"Wow, the ocean is so pretty."

Deciding that was good enough, I focused solely on the beauty of the wide-open sea and drove straight to the hotel.

And so.

"...Good morning."

"Good morning."

When I knocked on the hotel room door, Kai answered immediately, dressed in her school uniform. I had still never seen Kai in anything other than her uniform. ...Ah, wait, there was that time I lent her my clothes. They were far too baggy on her, though, making her look like a little kid playing dress-up.

"Are you hurting anywhere?"

"I'm fine. I'm used to it."

No.

"I asked if you were hurting anywhere."

I hadn't asked whether she could bear it.

Kai lowered her gaze for a moment, then brushed her fingers against the wound on her head. "Ow..." she let slip. Perhaps disliking how much it stood out, she had already peeled away the bandages I had taped over it yesterday.

"My head still hurts a little if I touch it. And my side, a bit. That's about all."

"I see..."

Since I couldn't very well check with my own hands, I had no choice but to take her word for it.

As I stared at her, she apologized, shrinking back slightly.

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine, but..."

In all likelihood, she had grown up in an environment where exposing any sign of weakness meant being attacked for it.

Oh, honestly. Why does a fury as fierce as if she were my own child swirl inside me every time I'm forced to look at her wounds?

"You get irritated pretty easily, Yuki-san."

"Maybe so. But I'm not angry at you."

I was merely pitying a life where enduring such cruelty was her only choice, and burning with rage at the adults who had forced it upon her.

"I'll drop you off near school this morning, but you're walking back. Our schedules won't match up."

Should I have put her up in a hotel closer to her school? No, being too close would have its own problems. If someone spotted Kai loitering around a hotel in the neighborhood, the rumors and speculation would blow up into a massive scandal.

If possible, I wanted to keep Kai a secret. Once word got out, hiding my involvement would be entirely impossible.

Grabbing her bag, Kai returned and peered up into my face with a mischievous glint in her eye.

"Worrying about me that much... do you like me or something?"

"Yeah, yeah, crazy about you. Huge fan. Now hurry up, we're leaving."

Brushing off Kai's attempt to fish for a reaction, I ushered her out of the room. Standing beside her, I became acutely aware yet again of the difference in our heights. She really was such a petite girl, so fragile that I hesitated even to touch her. And yet, the striking gleam of yellow-green in her profile was so prominent it took my breath away. Did everyone else look into those eyes and simply go on with their lives without feeling a thing? Or was I the only one drawn in so deeply?

"Is something wrong?"

Perhaps sensing my gaze, Kai looked up at me. There was no way I could admit I had been captivated by her eyes, so I brushed it aside.

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"I had some leftovers from what I bought at the shop last night."

"I see..."

The conversation went nowhere. Still unsure what else to say, I stepped into the elevator with her. Naturally, we shared almost no common ground. Setting aside emergencies, there was no reason our small talk would ever take off during ordinary times. Not that Kai having a peaceful moment was a bad thing, of course.

Even walking side by side, our strides were so different that I had to slow my pace. When walking with my young daughter, we held hands, which made it easy to match steps, but walking shoulder to shoulder with Kai still carried an undeniable awkwardness.

Reaching the parking lot, Kai slipped into the passenger seat.

"Thank you for the ride."

As her indifferent greeting threatened to lock our eyes together, I faced forward as quickly as I could without making it look unnatural.

"Put on your seatbelt."

"Oh. Right."

Pulling out of the space, a sudden anxiety crossed my mind: What if my daughter spots my car on her way to school? I needed to carve out a detour away from her usual route. I tapped at the navigation screen to check the map. As I did, the absurdity of giving a ride to my daughter's friend instead of my daughter struck me, and a bitter, wry smirk threatened to tug at my lips.

Leaving the hotel behind and emerging onto the coastal road, the scenery burst into vibrant life.

"The ocean is so pretty."

"...Yeah, it is."

Hearing her say the exact same thing I had said on the drive over nearly threw me off balance. And having been so distracted by Kai, I realized I had forgotten to pull out my sunglasses after all, turning my eyes away from the dazzling glare.

"Not that I can swim, though."

"You can't?"

I started to ask about swimming class at school, but caught myself as I remembered what my daughter had told me—about Kai never participating in gym class.

"I've choked for air before, but I've never actually swum."

"...Stop. You don't need to talk about that."

Sickening didn't begin to cover it. I nearly slammed my fist against the steering wheel.

"Just drop it."

Seeing Kai's lips about to move again, I cut her off. Kai looked down for a second, then let out a laugh.

"I wanted to talk about something completely unrelated, though."

Wondering if that was true, I relented. "Go ahead, then."

"I was hoping we could... exchange L*NE? With you, Yuki-san."

Kai showed me her smartphone. The device she had received from Chitaira Shio showed its age, with cracks running across all four corners of the screen.

"...Well, all right."

It was probably best if we had a way to get in touch in an emergency.

Pulling over to the side of the road, I quickly exchanged contacts with her.

I registered her name as Kai. On her end, I was almost certainly saved as Yuki. It was the common misreading of my name, and though I used to dislike being called that, Kai had used it so persistently that I had grown completely accustomed to it.

"Contacts... phone calls, connections... so many things I've never known."

"Make sure you keep your phone turned off while you're at school."

Kai simply stared down at the screen in her hands, as if she hadn't heard a single word.

After a sly, roundabout detour, I pulled over where a stone torii gate was visible in the distance. The school Kai and my daughter attended was just a stone's throw from that torii. Unconsciously straining my eyes ahead, I confirmed my daughter was nowhere in sight.

"Is here good for you?"

"Thanks."

Grabbing her bag, Kai quickly stepped out of the car. I had braced myself for her to tease me again, but she did nothing of the sort... which was a relief. I definitely wasn't disappointed. With a final small bow, Kai headed off toward the school without looking back even once.

I couldn't just sit here near the school and watch her leave like some carefree spectator.

Thinking I needed to get going myself, I put the car in gear, only for my phone to chime. Glancing down, I saw it was from Kai, whom I had just registered. And after I specifically told her to turn it off, I thought, narrowing my eyes as I checked the screen.

"Te"

"Te?"

That was all the first message said, but a second quickly followed.

"Test"

"Ah..."

She had apparently meant to send a test message and accidentally fired off the first character prematurely. Seeing how completely unused to it she was almost warmed my heart with its innocence, but what kind of adult smiled when her instructions were being utterly ignored?

"Received. Make sure to keep your phone turned off while you're at school, okay?"

Along with confirming the test, I threw in a bit of disciplinary guidance. No reply came back.

...And then.

Once I got to work and dove into my duties, consulting with colleagues gave me a fleeting chance to put it all out of my mind.

Yet right around the time that was presumably middle school lunch break, another message arrived from Kai.

"Is she really not taking me seriously at all?"

Annoyed as I was, I still checked the message between tasks.

"Are you coming today"

“...Wearing? No, wait—coming over.”

TL Note: Kai's message was sent without kanji: "今日はきますか". While she intended to ask “今日は来ますか” (Kyou wa kimasu ka — "Are you coming over today?"), she initially misread the particle は (wa) as the start of the verb 履く (haku / to put on lower garments), reading it as “はきますか” (hakimasu ka — "Are you wearing [any] today?").

She was apparently asking whether I was coming to her room after work. ...What should I do?

Yesterday, we had parted ways right after getting her room settled, so there were things I wanted to check in on once she had a chance to breathe. Were there, really? I didn't know—it felt like I was just manufacturing excuses. Any checking in would just be asking how school went, and something like that could easily be handled over the phone.

I had no reason to go to the hotel to see Kai, leaving behind my husband, who was waiting at home so we could have dinner together. None whatsoever. Under normal circumstances, I would have simply declined and that would be that, yet here I was, hesitating. Scrambling for an excuse. But if someone were to ask whether I actually wanted to go, my knee-jerk reaction was to think, Not particularly.

Just like this morning, it wasn't as if Kai and I had much of anything to talk about anyway.

Kai and I weren't friends... and we weren't mother and daughter either. It was a relationship that left me brooding over what it could possibly be.

Finding a justification within my existing framework of values was essentially impossible. That was why the old me refused to accept it. The sheer discomfort of a faintly budding new me tugging at my sleeve—that, surely, was the true identity of this foul mood.

In other words, the me born from meeting Kai wanted to see her.

She wanted nothing more than to see herself reflected inside those yellow-green eyes.

What in the world was I thinking? Even though it was my own mind, I couldn't understand myself in the slightest.

"......Well."

It was her first day staying at the hotel, after all.

Going just to check on how she was doing should be fine for today.

As I settled on that excuse and turned back to work, an unfamiliar voice sneered at me.

Look at you, paving the way as if this were some carefully weighed decision.

You had already planned on going the moment you told your husband you'd be late.

"Good evening."

"...Good evening."

In the end, I had come after all.

Kai, who usually wore a faint smile, greeted me with an utterly deadpan expression, catching me a little off balance. She was still wearing her school uniform. Having offered only that perfunctory greeting, she retreated inside, and I followed after her.

"It's way too spacious for one person, isn't it?"

Beyond a bedroom with enough depth to hold twin beds with room to spare, there was another room of identical size right next to it. Even if you multiplied a petite girl like Kai by four, the emptiness of the space would probably still feel desolate. But Kai didn't answer, keeping her back turned. Only the hushed hum of the air purifier drifted between us.

"Kai?"

Worried she might have run into trouble again, I called out her name.

"Um... I sent you a message."

Spinning around, she tossed that out with an aggressive, prickly edge to her voice.

I heard her, but I couldn't wrap my head around what she was getting at.

"You sent one, yes. ...What about it?"

I couldn't fathom what she wanted to say. But as I waited for an explanation, Kai seemed to regain her composure, looking away. She peeked up at me as if hesitating to put it into words, shifting her weight from foot to foot restlessly.

"You took a long time to reply..."

"...Huh?"

True, when she asked if I was coming, I hadn't replied that I was on my way until after work, but still.

Only after letting out that halfhearted response did I finally grasp what she was getting at. Wait, is that really what this is about? I wondered, dumbfounded. Sensing my reaction, Kai looked away and rattled off the rest of her complaint at a slightly brisk pace.

"Apparently, I don't handle slow replies very well."

"...Huuuh."

Apparently, she was serious. A deflated sigh slipped past my lips at the sheer absurdity of it.

The reason Kai had been so stiff was simply that my delayed reply had made her sulk.

"Ha... Hah."

An uncontrollable giggle tickled the back of my front teeth. Kai narrowed her eyes, blatantly displeased.

"What's so funny?"

"I mean, coming out with something so cute yet needy all of a sudden... It's just endearing. Yeah, that's the word."

There was relief in seeing Kai express such an ordinary, mundane grievance. Her childishness filled me with a sense of safety and fondness. Beneath that, a spark of joy bloomed at realizing I could actually understand her emotions.

"You put on that face and attitude like you're so unusual, but I think you're way more normal than you let on."

I tapped her shoulder casually, voicing my conviction.

"...If only," she murmured.

Even this cynical reaction of hers wasn't out of the ordinary for a girl her age. As I smiled, Kai backed away in sullen annoyance and sat on the edge of the bed. Her expression was rigid with displeasure at being laughed at, and knowing she'd react that way yet being unable to hold back... was just cute.

It was definitely cuteness. Without a doubt.

Setting my bag down on the sofa by the window and taking a seat, I watched Kai pull up one knee and press her chin and lips against it. Staring sharply ahead, she refused to look in my direction.

"From now on, I'd appreciate it if you replied to my LINE messages a little faster."

"Yes, yes, I'll do what I can."

I had never dated an overbearing lover, so I could laugh it off for now as something novel and fresh. Not that we were lovers, of course. None of my friends had ever made such demands of me either. If someone had, I probably would have cut ties with them on the spot. So why was it acceptable from Kai? Well... she was still just a child.

Not a friend, either. If asked what we were, I wouldn't have known what name to give our relationship.

Even standing together, we were simply me and Kai.

"Still, you can't blame me for being slow when you text me in the middle of my workday. And don't text me during your lunch break at school, either. Phones aren't allowed on school grounds."

Technically, even bringing them to school was forbidden by rule, but since students needed them to contact their parents, that policy had become a dead letter. Resting her hands against the bed, Kai let out a sigh.

"What are you, Yuki-san, the student guidance counselor?"

"Well, aren't I something close to it? I'm the one looking after you, after all."

This wasn't like taking care of a stray cat the way I used to. Raising a child should have taught me the sheer gravity of being involved in another human being's life, so was it really right to say something like that so casually? Not that I meant it lightly. But even if I looked after her, until when? Until Kai could stand on her own feet?

That was far too distant a future, impossible to know how many years away. In the end, this was nothing more than a stopgap measure, doomed from the start. The real solution was undoubtedly to entrust Kai to a broader, proper framework.

Whether Kai actually wanted that, however, was another matter entirely.

"And honestly, I was debating whether to come at all."

Hugging her left arm to her chest, Kai silently asked Why? with her eyes.

"I mean... it's not like there was any real reason for me to go out of my way."

Coming here gave me no real purpose in this room. And Kai shouldn't have had one either.

So this was just a detour... delaying the time I went home. Yes, nothing more than lingering on the way.

"As for me... if you come, Yuki-san..."

Kai's lips moved with more deliberate clarity than usual, only to halt halfway through.

Letting go of her left arm, she turned away.

"...I welcome it."

"...Isn't there a more honest way to put that?"

Her meaning came through clearly enough, and for Kai, the words had been surprisingly straightforward—at least, until the halfway mark.

Kai was happy when I came, apparently. ...Happy, huh? Rather than the usual skeptical Why?, a subtle sense of flattery softened the corners of my mouth. It never felt bad to be liked by someone. Especially when attached to a contrarian like Kai, whose peculiar way of closing the distance had something... indescribable about it.

I watched as Kai rose from the bed and walked into the adjoining room.

Perhaps I was far more sentimental toward Kai than I cared to admit.

Still barefoot, Kai opened the door leading out to the balcony. Framed by the open doorway, draped in the night, she turned back and offered me a faint smile, tapping her index finger lightly against the railing.

Drawn by the sound of waves drifting from beyond the dense darkness, I stood up as well.

"...Brr, freezing."

I had felt it after getting out of the car in the hotel parking lot, but being right on the coast, the air carried a biting chill. On top of that, occasional strong gusts tore through, whipping our hair around. Taking a gust like that head-on looked enough to scatter Kai's fragile frame to pieces, which was faintly alarming. Holding down her unruly hair, Kai murmured.

"The wind's gotten cold, hasn't it?"

"It has. Winter's around the corner."

"Even so, I..."

Kai started to say something more, but pressed her eyes and lips shut into tight, flat lines. After a brief silence in the dark, she relaxed both and looked up at me.

"Sorry. I tried to say something clever, but nothing came to mind."

"Well, that's a refreshingly graceful admission of defeat."

Standing shoulder to shoulder beside Kai, I took a deep breath. The brisk chill coursed through my body, sharpening my senses.

"So I'll leave it to you, Yuki-san."

"Wait, what...?"

She was dumping an impossible request on me out of nowhere. I didn't even understand what the point was.

"What was it again...? The wind is cold, winter is near, but... Is that all I have to go on?"

Kai nodded as if to say, Exactly, exactly. But even with her encouragement—wind, cold... winter, near. My thoughts degraded into broken fragments. The wind is cold, winter is near, but I am... staying in a nice room. No, that's definitely not it.

Stripped of the daytime's distractions, the sound of waves brushing against the sand expanded the distance between us and the shore. It didn't stop at the beach, but seemed to wash all the way up to dampen our ears. Some things were perceived in much sharper detail in the dark... But so what? I tried tracing the imagery like running my fingers along a map, only to find myself wandering down tangents. Kai never took her eyes off me, quietly waiting for my answer. Feeling cornered under her gaze made me flustered; I wished she would just look forward.

"But I... feel bracingly refreshed as the cold, um, caresses my cheeks and makes me shiver."

"...Right."

Kai's reaction was blatantly unimpressed. On a scale of one to five, I'd be lucky to get a single point.

"Uh, I mean... when I fill my lungs with the night breeze and shiver from head to toe..."

"You really love shivering, don't you?"

"Hush, you. Forget it, I can't think of anything. We're done."

I threw in the towel before embarrassing myself any further.

The thought of what on earth I was doing out here while keeping my husband and dinner waiting back home sent something churning violently inside me. Feeling like I might lose my mind if I dwelled on it, I decided to look away for now.

"I was always more of a science and math person, anyway," I offered as an excuse.

At my flimsy excuse, Kai smiled faintly and leaned against the railing.

"It was too soon for us to come up with that answer."

"Look at you, wrapping up a total cop-out with a literary flourish."

Kai seemed to have far more talent for this than I did. Resting my cheek in my hand against the railing, I gazed down at the scenery.

"How was school?"

It sounded so much like what I'd ask my daughter that an odd chuckle threatened to slip out.

"The same as usual. The school knows full well what kind of notorious family I come from, so my homeroom teacher doesn't pry or say anything."

"Is that really okay?"

Even if expecting the world from teachers was unfair, didn't they worry even a little?

"My teacher's normal. It's you, Yuki-san... who's utterly fearless."

"...I certainly think the people in your house have lost their minds, but..."

"To put it in words you can understand, Yuki-san, every single person living in that house is a criminal."

"..."

Hearing Kai put it so bluntly finally sparked a creeping sense of real danger. In the first place, people who routinely tormented a child like her were already beyond the boundaries of anything I could imagine.

Only now did I begin to regret having visited that house, wondering if it had been utterly reckless.

Normally, however, someone disappearing without a word of explanation would have caused a massive uproar... so facing people on whom "normal" had zero hold was likely far beyond my ability to deal with.

I lapsed into silence for a while. Another agony added to the tally of getting involved with Kai.

With strings dragging behind me like this, I realized with sinking clarity... it was already too late to pull out.

"If the distance between spring watching over winter and the love in my heart were to overlap, there would be no hope of a thaw."

As the wind picked up, Kai abruptly recited what sounded like a line of poetry. Unfortunately, I had never heard of it.

"What's that?"

"Kaku-neesan used it as a pickup line. Either it's meaningless, or she ripped it off from someone else."

"Kaku-neesan... Wait, is she the one who..."

"The one who tried to violate me, yes."

"Wait a minute..."

Her unvarnished words were so aggressive they made me squirm with discomfort. But Kai continued unperturbed.

"She's a hedonist and undeniably stupid... The only commendable things about her are her looks and her lack of hidden motives. I suppose her face and figure are striking, though she's not my type at all. Plus, she reeks of mint. I'm pretty sure she'd hit on you too if you two ever met, Yuki-san."

"Hit on me...? What are you—"

"Make sure you turn her down cold, all right?"

"Well, of course I would, I'm married... No, wait, that's not even the point."

I fluttered my hands in a flustered "Wait a second." She had been talking about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but honestly, that was the part that had been snagging on my mind all along.

"Are both of your sisters... romantically into women?"

I finally ventured to touch on a subject I had hesitated to bring up. She brought it up so matter-of-factly that I had never found the chance to ask, but it had piqued my curiosity. Kai gave a soft "Hmm," pausing with slight hesitation before answering.

"If directing sexual desire toward a woman who fits your tastes counts as love, then yes."

"...In other words, their targets are women, more or less."

Sexual orientation... or preference? Not being familiar with the terminology, I wasn't sure what was proper, but that was simply how they lived their lives. No one around me had ever openly declared such a thing, so I had never given it deep thought.

Yet when I turned my eyes toward Kai, our gazes locked as if she had been waiting for me to look.

For an instant, I felt the dizzying illusion of floating, as though everything was being sucked into those eyes.

"Do you feel repulsed by that kind of love, Yuki-san?"

Was it just my own prejudice and overthinking that made her phrasing sound so loaded?

She was asking a question that was awkward to answer in this day and age, yet impossible to dodge.

A woman and a woman.

The suffocating sensation from when Kai licked my finger threatened to rush back, and I gave my head a sharp shake.

"I guess I just feel like people can do what they want. It has nothing to do with me, after all."

For some reason, even though I was speaking normally, the words felt like they were tumbling out in a rush.

Though my eyes were ostensibly watching the sea, it felt as if they were merely dissolved into pitch-black void.

I had no real sense that the answer had actually come from my own mouth.

"Is that so?"

"Yeah."

My voice and response were curt, as if bracing my body to leave no opening. The elbows I rested on the railing were beginning to ache under my own weight. Weighed down by something nameless, my head gradually drooped, and the stifling pressure mounted.

Even though she wasn't licking my finger right now.

Even if her sisters were like that.

What about Kai?

I couldn't bring myself to ask. And while I hesitated, Kai changed the subject.

"About your daughter, though—you should probably tell her to be more on guard."

"Against what?"

"Against Chitaira."

Kai pointed at her own face, as if to say, This.

"The other classmates heard the rumors and properly steer clear of Chitaira, but Amamiya-san talks to me like it's nothing... Shouldn't you teach her better?"

"Teach her what? 'Kai's pretty twisted, so forgive her if she makes you mad sometimes'?"

"Yuki-san."

"I don't see what there is to be afraid of in a kid who knows how to worry about her friend."

My daughter surely felt the same way. Besides, I doubt I could have convinced her even if I tried to explain.

Just how dangerous Kai's family was wasn't something anyone could truly comprehend without experiencing it firsthand.

Kai leaned against the railing once more and let out a sigh.

"You're soft, Yuki-san."

"...Maybe so."

The gust ruffled Kai's bangs, and through the parting strands, the bruise along her hairline peeked in and out of view.

Naturally, it went without saying that it would have been best if such a thing had never existed, yet without that bruise, I wouldn't be standing here with Kai right now. A single injury and an encounter had set Kai's bizarre new life in motion, and I... as if drawn along by it, was here too.

"Hey, why don't you go get a haircut sometime?"

Watching her windblown hair out of the corner of my eye, I tossed out the suggestion.

"I'm not really a fan of pixie cuts, though."

"Not cutting it all off, just trimming it. Your hair's trimmed so unevenly. Do you cut it yourself?"

Mid-sentence, another possibility crossed my mind, and I almost tacked on, Or worse...

Without taking her eyes off the night view, Kai answered in her usual tone.

"Yes. By myself."

"...Well, that's still not great, but..."

"Total rejection, huh?"

Cut by someone in her house, or perhaps torn out—that horrifying thought had flashed through my mind. But her profile revealed nothing of the truth. Pinching her bangs, Kai gave a noncommittal reply: "Well, eventually."

"Still, talking in person is nice. The replies come immediately."

From the nuance of her voice, I could tell she meant it from the bottom of her heart. I had come to understand Kai enough to pick up on that much.

"Are you really that impatient?"

"I just don't handle the time spent waiting for a reply very well."

That's literally what being impatient means.

"So on that note, I might as well ask now—are you coming tomorrow too?"

If she had phrased it not as "are you coming," but as "will you come for me," how would I have answered?

"Tomorrow... I'm not coming."

"I see."

Maintaining her composure, Kai projected an attitude that said she had already known.

"I mean, tomorrow's Saturday. I wouldn't have an excuse to take the car all the way out on my day off..."

...I can't think of an excuse or a lie, I almost said, stopping myself in time. I reined myself in, realizing that phrasing sounded like I would have come if only I had a pretext. Whether Kai noticed or not was uncertain, but she immediately seized the opening to extract a promise.

"Since you're the student guidance counselor, you'll come check on me on weekdays, right?"

"Ah... Playing that card, are we?"

Kai would never just come right out and say "Please come visit." Finding charm in her peculiar brand of concession and phrasing made my cheeks soften—a sure sign that I was getting thoroughly corrupted. Weekdays... My excuse would have to be that things were piling up as the end of the year approached, I supposed. But if that went on every single day, surely... Wait, why was I already assuming I would come every day? Ugh, examining my true feelings alongside reality was exhausting.

I just wanted tomorrow to hurry up and be Saturday so I could spend time with my family without thinking about anything.

If days like this were going to continue, I might need to start searching for reasons to visit this hotel.

For now, even just feeling this wind and taking in this view... Gazing out at the nocturnal expanse of ocean from the balcony, I caught myself thinking, Isn't this nice?

Despite being born in a seaside town, the ocean had never really factored into my sphere of daily life. At most, my husband and I might take an occasional stroll along the shore. My entire existence had been contained within the urban center of town. But stepping just a fraction beyond the common sense I had cultivated, the vast sea opened before me. Perhaps I had plunged into that open ocean without the slightest preparation. Drawn down toward the alluring, vivid yellow-green lurking at the bottom of the sea, as if caught in a trap.

Kai, I started to say. It might have been a wish for her safety, or a prayer for her peace of mind each day, yet I couldn't find the words to express it well. When it came to being honest, I was just as stubborn as she was.

"Ka~i."

A syrupy, sing-song tone slipped out quite by accident, sending a prickle of cold sweat down my neck. Kai's eyes widened in sheer astonishment. My cheeks flared with heat as if lit on fire, making the freezing air feel ironically pleasant.

"What was that just now?"

"I kind of... messed up."

Staring blankly at Kai, whatever had built up inside me must have given my voice a bizarre running start. As the heat crept all the way to my ears, Kai surprisingly refrained from teasing me, simply taking it in stride.

Pushing herself up from the railing, Kai leaned forward and spoke.

"I'm sure there are zero hopes or deep feelings entrusted to it... but when you call me by it, Yuki-san, it actually doesn't sound half bad."

"There aren't any of those in 'Yuki-san' either, you know..."

Because I wasn't Yuki. A name with no history, used only by Kai.

Kai's voice was just like that snow—brushing against me so faintly, only to melt away and vanish in an instant. Even if my fingers reached out to grasp it, they were never fast enough... which was why I couldn't afford to miss a single word she spoke.

"You know, when I call you Kai, the kanji I picture in my head isn't 'clod of earth.'"

With my finger, I traced the character I imagined in midair.

"I picture the ocean when I call your name."

The very thing we were looking at right now.

Not a parched clod of earth, but a deep sea that showed no bottom.

It carried a wish that Kai could escape that house and swim as far away as possible... Or rather, that thought only occurred to me just now, when in reality, I was merely associating it with the sheer depth of her eyes.

"Shellfish in the sea... Kai. I see."

"I didn't think it through that far, so getting that impressed 'oho' reaction is actually a little embarrassing."

I certainly hadn't planned on shellfish.

"Chitaira Kai... with the kanji for the sea?"

Whatever thoughts that name evoked, Kai closed her eyes and gave a subtle sway of her shoulders. Her reaction said it wasn't bad. I mocked myself for acting like a scholar constantly scrutinizing her every subtle shift, but I had to admit, the feeling wasn't half bad either.

To give this girl's name meaning.

Perhaps that was my purpose—I found myself thinking such a thing.

"It's getting colder. Let's go back inside."

"All right."

Answering me, Kai drew in a deep breath of the coastal wind.

The cold sea breeze heralded the arrival of winter, yet I could return to a room overflowing with light.

There was still a place to shelter from the wind.

...Did that manage to sound the part?

Looking back, was I fooling myself into believing I could guide Kai down a healthy path?

Since she was the same age as my daughter, perhaps I had merely come to view her as another demanding child.

It would take a little more time for me to realize that the one who stripped Kai of that wholesomeness was none other than myself.

ToC