“That’s awesome. I’m crazy for things where the girl tries to kill the guy she fell for and make him hers,” Ryuto said as he efficiently cleaned his own plate and then pulled Tohko’s omelet over without a thought. Tohko frowned and glared at Ryuto.
“This is not a story about that kind of dirty vortex of emotion. It’s the tale of the melancholy love of the water spirit who is bound by an inescapable law.
“On his wedding night with his new wife, Undine appears wearing a white veil and Huldebrand tells her, ‘I want to die with my lips on yours.’ The scene where Undine gives him a kiss and lets loose her tears is so poignant and beautiful, your heart just swells. It’s totally different from your casual smooching.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Looking blasé, Ryuto loaded some omelet onto a buttered baguette and bit into it.
As I listened to their uninhibited conversation, it struck me again that these two had known each other since childhood and lived in the same house. So Ryuto had been the one Tohko meant when she said she’d made a phone call. And Ryuto had also investigated the things Tohko had asked of him and hurried here. Would most people go that far for a childhood acquaintance who was like a sister to them?
Deep in my heart, I felt something hazy.
When we finished eating, Ryuto told us the results of his investigation.
After the mass murder at the Himekura estate, Akira Shikishima had gone to Germany to study abroad as planned. A Japanese student studying abroad around the same time had written about Akira in his letters home, and through his connections, Ryuto had been allowed to see them.
“At first, Akira threw up and stuff a bunch from stress, and he took awhile to recuperate apparently. It sounds like he had a lot of trouble ’cos he couldn’t communicate.
“So there was that, and then the way he talked and carried himself was real classy and polite, and he was serious, but he wasn’t good at interactin’ with people. He didn’t drink alcohol and went back to his boardinghouse before the sun set. The guy really whined in his letters, like ‘Oh, it’s such a shame ’cos I wanna get to know the other Japanese students,’ or ‘Oh, I think he hates me in particular,’ or ‘Oh, Akira Shikishima is like the moon floatin’ high in the sky overhead.’”
Akira would often sit by himself, zoned out, and at those times he would always tug on his earlobe with a sad look in his eyes. The love he’d left behind in Japan had had the habit of touching her earlobes originally. Apparently he would talk about how she was gone now with a dark look on his face.
Yuri’s habit of touching her earlobes—
Maybe Akira thought back about what had happened in Japan while touching his soft ears.
He’d known about Yuri drowning herself. How had he felt about his love ending her life because of him…?
It coincided with my life and sent a jolt down my spine.
That was a torment more terrible than death!
Apparently Akira never once went home while he was studying abroad. It was almost certainly because of Yuri. He probably would have felt as if his heart were being ripped apart. Even after his period of study abroad passed, he stayed over there, and after a while, he disappeared.
Germany entered a dark period, and even after the student who’d written the letters returned to Japan, he worried about Akira. Then a letter reached him from a local friend there that told him about seeing Akira on the street holding the hand of a small child. Since the child looked like Akira, the friend supposed that he had married and started a family.
What had Akira’s life been like after that?
Tohko put her index finger to her lips and listened intently.
Ryuto also told us about the fire that had occurred at the estate fifty years ago.
“I heard the police were investigatin’ it as an arson, but in the end they never caught the person responsible and there was somethin’ really off about the whole thing. The source of the fire wasn’t a storage shed or a side building, it was right smack in the middle of the main house. And even though it was the middle of the night, they got word about it fast. The fact that the master of the house happened to be stayin’ there by himself secretly was the weirdest thing of all. And he definitely didn’t get his eye hurt from the fire. When he was carried into the hospital, some people said there was blood pourin’ down his face…”
Ryuto drained his now-tepid cup of tea in one gulp and returned the cup to its saucer.
“There’s definitely somethin’ more to the fire fifty years ago. The Himekuras’re involved, so the local cops probably couldn’t interfere much. I mean, the possibility that there was direct pressure from the Himekuras is huge.”
“The master fifty years ago would be Maki’s grandfather, right?”
“Yup. The current head of the family, Mitsukuni Himekura. He had just taken over when it happened, still a young buck. Surprisingly, he was sickly when he was a kid, and he would go and recuperate in the countryside. After the thing with Shirayuki, people in the main branch of the family were droppin’ left and right and the boy who was supposed to take over died, so Maki’s grandpa was pulled out in a hurry. He was a sheltered rich kid, so at first everyone around him underestimated him, I guess. His true colors came out fast, though, and he crushed all of his enemies. He made the Himekura family, which had been headin’ for oblivion after the thing with Shirayuki, even richer than before. He’s still the reignin’ head of the family. He’s a monster.”
“Grandpa has an unquestioned role within the family, like a god. Nobody opposes him, and no one is allowed to have an opinion.”
Maki had said the same thing about her grandfather.
Mitsukuni Himekura was involved in the fire fifty years ago. What did it mean?
Tohko asked, “When the fire happened, who was the first one to start putting it out?”
Ryuto grinned as if he’d been waiting for that question.
“A woman who just happened to be walking by. Her name was Hiroko Uotani.”
Tohko gasped and leaned forward.
I gasped, too.
Did he say Hiroko?! Uotani’s grandmother was Hiroko, too! She’d been a maid at the estate eighty years ago—
The smile still on his face, Ryuto told us, “Yeah, the only person who survived the incident eighty years ago.”
The air grew suddenly heavier.
With a perplexed expression, Tohko whispered, “Hiroko was the first person to discover the mass murder, and thirty years later she was the first to discover the fire that had broken out at the same house.”
A tiny shudder ran through my spine and cold sweat trailed down my back. It was too perfect to be chance.
“Hiroko alerted the fire department and then ran into the fire herself and even managed to rescue the master. Mitsukuni Himekura owes her his life. Last year, when Hiroko died, they say he came to see her in secret before her funeral.”
The old, phantasmal story that had happened eighty years ago had a sudden feeling of immediacy, as if it had drawn closer to our reality.
Tohko wore a tense expression.
Ryuto laughed offhandedly.
“That’s all I can tell ya for now. If anythin’ else develops, I’ll hear through my cell. And now, my throat’s all dried out so could I bug you for a refill on my tea, Tohko?”
The mood eased at his carefree cheerfulness, and Tohko’s face, too, curved into a smile.
“Okay. As thanks for all the hard work you’ve done, I’ll bring you something sweet with your tea, too.”
“Cool. You can take your time, don’t worry.”
Tohko left the room and her footsteps grew gradually quieter.
Suddenly Ryuto leaned in toward me.
“Konoha! You and Tohko were in the same room this morning, weren’cha? You were both in pj’s, and Tohko was all mussed up from bein’ asleep. What was that? Were you together all last night? You made any progress?”
I leaned away from him. Had he asked Tohko for tea just so he could ask
me this? The skin around my ears burned with embarrassment.
“Tohko said she was afraid of ghosts and forced her way into my room, that’s all. I swear, it’s nothing.”
“Whaaat? You serious?”
Ryuto’s face turned openly disappointed and his voice rose in criticism.
“Argh. I woulda been way cooler with it if you and Tohko had just done it. I thought maybe that’s what you were gonna tell me, but that’s just sad. What’re you doin’?”
“Why are you attacking me when nothing happened?”
“Gah. You coulda been a little bolder since Tohko’s upset an’ all.”
I warily asked, “Tohko’s upset?”
Ryuto looked at me with incredibly sexy, mysterious eyes.
“Course she’s upset. Despite the way she acts, she’s a sensitive high school girl. She gets upset about everything, from little stuff to big stuff. Can’t you figure it out, Konoha?”
The sad look I’d seen at dawn came abruptly into my mind and my chest ached, as if it was being squeezed tightly.
Seeing me rendered speechless, Ryuto smiled even more meaningfully.
“I mean, when she’s like that, if you could just write her supersweet stories, I’d appreciate it. Ever since her summer cram courses ended, she’s been at home whining that she wants to eat your snacks.”
Was that true?
The world was full of sweet stories Tohko would love without me having to write them.
“Oh yeah! I’ll teach you the words that cheer Tohko up when she’s depressed.”
I hesitated, but he brought his lips close to my ear and whispered three words as if they were a magic spell.
“Hey! I can’t write something with those prompts. That’s so embarrassing. Does that really cheer Tohko up?”
“It’s more effective than an energy drink. The ingredients work. So I guess the rest is up to the skill of the cook,” he said smugly, and then his eyes turned suddenly sedate. “You’ll be fine, Konoha. You’re Tohko’s author.”
A dark shadow fell over my heart. He’d told me that I was Tohko’s author again.
But I had zero desire to be that. It wasn’t anything about Tohko, it was just the author part that I never, ever wanted to…
My fingers became as cold as ice and my mood slumped further and further. Just as I felt as if I was sinking into a swamp of memories, the door opened.
But it wasn’t Tohko standing there, it was Maki. And she didn’t look happy.
“So it was you,” she said in a hard voice, turning a sharp, prickly look on Ryuto.
“I’d heard a moron trying to look like a big man was all over some blonde like a rutting dog in front of my house at the crack of dawn and that he wanted to stay here, and it looks like my foreboding was right.”
I was surprised by her sudden harsh words.
I had picked up on the fact that Maki didn’t think fondly of Ryuto from the distaste in her voice and the way she looked when she spoke his name. She hadn’t cared for Ryuto ever since Amemiya was still alive and dating him.
Maki had venomously told me after the fact that because Ryuto had involved me in Amemiya’s problems at the time, it had thrown off her plans.
So I knew that Maki wouldn’t celebrate Ryuto’s arrival. But she wouldn’t normally have bared her emotions to quite this extent.
Leaving aside the way she made nasty comments with a smile, of course…
“You shouldn’t keep looking at people like they’re cockroaches, Princess.”
Ryuto’s face tightened, as well.
Maki hated Ryuto, and he bore her a grudge in return.
Well, there was no avoiding that since she had held him captive at a hospital and made him disappear from the world. Plus, after everything that happened, he probably hadn’t gotten any apology from Maki whatsoever.
Ryuto kicked back his chair and stood up, then walked toward Maki. I gulped reflexively and clenched my hands into sweating fists.
The two of them glared at each other as if they were the worst of enemies. When he was right in front of Maki, Ryuto lifted only his lips into a smile, as if to show her how relaxed he felt.
“Well, I’ll be relyin’ on your hospitality for a couple days. So thanks.”
“No way. Get out of here now.”
“I don’t have anywhere to stay.”
“That’s not my problem.”
Their wrestling gazes were getting more and more heated, and the air was crackling with tension.
“Maki! Ryuto investigated what happened eighty years ago for us! Besides, Tohko is the one who told him to come.”
“So what?”
Even dropping Tohko’s name didn’t change Maki’s attitude. If anything, her eyes grew even harder.
“It ticks me off seeing the smirking face of that sloppy womanizer. Hey, if you put a plastic bag over your head and promise you won’t speak another word for the rest of your life, then I don’t mind if you stay.”
“You some kinda monster or what?”
“Did I manage to get it through your skull that not every woman in this world is sweet on you? You need to thank me.”
“Oh, I see. Should I pay you tuition, too?”
“No need. Just get out of here. The mere fact that you exist infuriates me. It’s only been a month since Hotaru died and you’re making out with another woman, and on top of everything, you do it in front of me. You’ve got guts.”
The heat disappeared from Ryuto’s face and his expression grew cool.
“But Hotaru is dead.”
There was an incredibly loud noise and Ryuto’s knees buckled.
Maki had slapped him. Her eyebrows went up, her eyes flared with rage, and she screamed, “I wish you’d bled to death! I shouldn’t have been so nice and taken you to the hospital!”
Ryuto yelled back at her, “Except you held me prisoner when you did that and tormented me by deliberately droppin’ apples and melons and whatever in my cut!”
“That’s because you wouldn’t listen! I should have stabbed you with a paring knife and wriggled it around in your side! Then your heart wouldn’t be straying so easily, I bet!”
“It doesn’t change anything! Because Hotaru is dead! She’s gone now! Doesn’t matter if it’s one day or one month or ten years! Even if I waited a hundred years, I still wouldn’t get to touch Hotaru again or hold her in my arms or kiss her!”
Now what? Ryuto was getting pretty emotional, too. In a screaming voice that sounded as if it had been ripped out of his chest, he shouted, “I can’t go on thinkin’ about someone’s ghost when they’re buried in their grave, like Kurosaki did! Only warm, living girls have any hold over me. I have no idea what you’re so ticked off about, but don’t tear me apart over it!”
Maki’s cheeks flushed scarlet.
The next moment, she’d raised a leg and landed a brutal kick in Ryuto’s side.
I gasped.
It was the spot where Amemiya had stabbed him.
Ryuto’s eyes bugged out and he fell to his knees on the floor.
“You are such an obnoxious little snot,” she spat. She swept aside the hair that had fallen across her face in aggravation, then turned her back on him and walked away.
“Ryuto! Are you okay?!”
I ran over to him, frantic.
“—Nngh. Don’cha have any restraint, you bully?”
Ryuto wailed, still doubled over and holding his side. He looked so sad with his slumped shoulders, and for once he actually looked depressed.
I comforted him hesitantly. “Maybe whenever Maki sees you she remembers Amemiya…and it hurts her…and so maybe that was the only way she could manage to talk to you.”
“…Prolly.”
Ryuto didn’t lift his head. I caught a glimpse of him biting down on his lip. His hoarse voice was tinged with pain and desolation.
“If Hotaru were still alive…I mighta loved only her.
“The first time I saw Hotaru, I had this feelin’ that this one
would truss me right up…If she’d lived, it woulda happened.”
“I got this feelin’ like I finally met the ideal woman or like she would be someone important to me.”
“I always thought if I could meet a girl like that, she’d be all I ever needed.”
I vividly recalled him cheerfully talking her up in the restaurant, as if it had happened yesterday.
And how after that, on the day of the funeral, his entire body had been racked with his tears as he tore up Amemiya’s letter.
“If we’d had more time, I woulda taken her to all kinds of places. I woulda made her eat a ton and fattened her up. If only she’d love me.”
Ryuto had screamed those words in a shaking voice as the streaming rain poured over him and his tears rolled down his face.
“But Hotaru is gone…so all I can do is search forever. For a woman who’ll love me so much she wants to kill me and hold onto me tight.”
His desolation made my heart ache.
I had been nothing more than a reader of the story of the girl called Hotaru Amemiya.
But Ryuto—he had probably been just as sad as Maki to lose Amemiya. There was probably some pain or despair or sense of loss that only those two, who had been so deeply involved with Amemiya, understood. And maybe because of that, the two clashed with each other.
I heard light steps climbing the stairs and caught the sweet aroma of butter.
Tohko had returned.
Ryuto stood back up. In the same instant, Tohko’s cheerful face entered.
“Sorry I took so long.”
“Sorry, Tohko, but I gotta go.”
“What? Why, all of a sudden?”
Tohko blinked her eyes, holding a tray with a pot of tea and some cupcakes sprinkled with sugar.
With an amiable look, Ryuto grabbed two cupcakes and bit into one of them.
“Mm, that’s good.”
“C’mon, Ryuto, what’s going on?”
“I came all the way here, I figured I oughta sightsee. I’ll still be around and I’ll come check up on ya.”
“Where are you staying?”
Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower Page 13
