“Everyone here seems a bit sleepy. I suppose you’re tired, having just come back from break? I thought it might be nice to cover something fast-paced at a time like this, so that’s the kind of topic I chose for today’s lecture. I’ll distribute the materials, so please pass them around.”

Takatsuki handed a stack of papers to the student sitting closest to the front.

As the materials circulated, little giggles gradually spread through the formerly lethargic air.

When the papers finally reached him, Naoya almost burst into laughter as well. This is what he meant by “fast-paced”? he thought.

When it came to the examples in the materials, well…

“So today, I’d like to begin by talking about Jet Granny!” Takatsuki declared proudly, and the classroom erupted in earnest laughter.

Smiling broadly, Takatsuki continued.

“Jet Granny is an old woman who runs at remarkable speeds. She’s so fast that she overtakes cars driving on roads and highways at night, as though she’s equipped with a jet engine. There are many variations of the story about this old woman, as well as various monikers for her, such as Turbo Granny, Dash Granny, and Fast Granny. Old women are generally thought of as slow-moving, so this disparity of one running at the speed of a jet plane is interesting! Such women usually run on two legs, like normal people, but Turbo Granny sometimes runs on all fours and has a piece of paper with the word ‘turbo’ written on it on her back.”

Though hardly what one would expect an associate professor to stand in front of a classroom and say, Takatsuki’s lectures pretty much always started off like this.

“The ghost stories about these women are often simple and short. Example one: ‘I was driving my car, when suddenly there was a knock on the window from outside. I looked and saw an old woman running alongside my car. My speed at the time was sixty-two miles per hour.’ Example two: ‘I was driving on the highway, when an old woman came running from behind at a tremendous speed and passed me. As she passed, our eyes locked, and I could see that she was grinning.’ In some cases, accidents are caused on account of the old woman, but most of the stories are just sightings or encounters. The reason the stories stand on their own, as simple tales of seeing or coming across, is probably because the appearance the women make is impactful.”

Takatsuki spoke cheerfully in a soft, gentle voice. In his well-tailored three-piece suit and with a friendly smile on his model-like face, he looked just like he had before summer vacation.

Watching him from a seat in the middle of the classroom, Naoya thought the professor looked well. He seemed to have made a safe recovery since the matter at the amusement park.

“Now, are there any stories about supernatural beings who move at high speeds like this other than old women? Yes, indeed. There are cases where the person is an old man rather than a woman, as in Supersonic Grandpa. But nevertheless, in these types of stories, it’s overwhelmingly common for the person to be an old woman—one who runs at incredible speeds. That’s something I’d love to encounter sometime.”

Takatsuki picked up some chalk as he spoke.

Once again, there was scattered laughter around the room. Takatsuki often drew characters from urban legends on the blackboard, but everyone was already well aware of his lack of artistic talent.

However, as Takatsuki put the chalk to the board, he stopped.

“Well, since we’re talking about her, I’d like to draw Jet Granny, but… In truth, it’s not easy to do, because we don’t know what she looks like.”

The students looked puzzled at his words.

Instead of drawing a picture, Takatsuki wrote “Jet Granny” on the board in his neat handwriting.

Beside that, he wrote two bullet points: “old woman” and “runs incredibly fast.” Then he turned back to the class.

“Those are the two defining features of Jet Granny. Or rather, those are her only two features. But then, exactly what sort of old woman is she? What hairstyle does she have? What does she wear?”

As he posed those questions, the students glanced down at the materials they had been given.

But in every single example, it simply said “old woman.”

There was almost no description of her appearance.

“In stories about the slit-mouthed woman, for example, in addition to stating that she wears a mask, there are often details about her physical features and clothing, such as ‘long hair,’ ‘wears a raincoat,’ ‘wears a red coat and white pants,’ and so on. For Toilet-Bound Hanako-san, it’s ‘has bobbed hair and a red skirt’ or ‘wears a red kimono.’ For Hikiko-san, it’s ‘eyes and mouth split at the corners, very tall, wears a tattered white kimono.’ Including a description of their physical appearances immediately makes them scarier and easier to imagine. So why is there no such description for Jet Granny? And why are there so many stories about old women running, when we don’t even know what they look like? The reason—is nothing more than the fact that they are ‘old women.’”

Takatsuki tapped on the blackboard with his knuckles where he had written “old woman.”

Though there had been a listlessness in the air at the start of class, at some point, every student in the room had begun paying attention. No one was dozing off or playing with their phones; they were all listening intently to Takatsuki.

Saying this, Takatsuki drew an arrow from “old woman” on the board and wrote “yamauba.”

“I’ve said many times before in lectures that even seemingly new modern urban legends can be traced back to old folktales and legends, yes? Yamauba lives in a house deep in the mountains, catching and eating anyone who passes by. And yamauba is also very fast. As in ‘The Onibaba of Adachigahara’ and ‘Sanmai no Ofuda,’ she chases the protagonist at incredible speeds. To us, living in the modern era, the yamauba that attacks travelers and temple monks is nothing more than an old legend. However, when she comes from deep in the mountains into areas of human habitation and finally down onto the highway, a new ghost story is born. Jet Granny is a continuation of the yamauba’s—that is, the running old woman’s—lineage. That’s why, even if all we have to go off of is ‘an extremely fast old woman,’ we can naturally picture what she looks like, because we already have the image of her predecessor, the yamauba, in our minds.”

And indeed, Naoya realized that when he pictured Jet Granny in his head, she didn’t look like his own grandmother or any old woman he saw around town, but instead like a kimono-clad demon woman with disheveled white hair. She looked exactly like the yamauba he had seen illustrated in picture books and in folktales as a child.

It seemed that in modern society, deep in the mountains was no longer yamauba’s active zone. Even so, Naoya felt like there was no need for her to come all the way to the highways to taunt drivers.

“Incidentally, why do you think it is that yamauba run so quickly in the first place? There’s actually another lineage we can trace here.”

Takatsuki turned back to the chalkboard.

“Jet Granny usually appears from behind and chases your vehicle. The yamauba in old tales also chases after story protagonists as they flee. There are many stories with this ‘woman who pursues’ motif. An old example comes from the ‘Yomi-no-kuni’ chapter of the Kojiki, when Izanagi is chased by Izanami and the Yomotsu-shikome.”

Pursued by the demon hags of the underworld that Izanami let loose, Izanagi had thrown down a hairpiece and the teeth of a comb.

Wild grapes and bamboo shoots sprouted from the objects he threw, and Izanagi had escaped while the Yomotsu-shikome feasted on them.

“The story of Izanagi making his escape by throwing talismans has been passed down in various ways in subsequent stories. In the old folktale I mentioned, ‘Sanmai no Ofuda,’ a temple monk being chased by a yamauba throws paper talismans to create streams and fires in much the same way. There are no such incidents involving Jet Granny, but there is another famous urban legend that inherited this element. Does anyone know what it is? How about you there?”

Takatsuki pointed to a female student sitting several rows from the front.

Flustered at suddenly being singled out, the girl hesitated, and Takatsuki tapped lightly on his own mouth.

“Your hint is: mask.”

“…Oh. Um, the slit-mouthed woman?”

“Correct.”

Takatsuki smiled at her and wrote “slit-mouthed woman” on the board alongside “woman who pursues.”

Putting down the chalk, Takatsuki brushed the powder from his fingertips.

He turned back to the students.

“As you might expect, this fear originated from the male perspective. Japan used to be a patriarchal society, much more male dominated than it is today. Moreover, in Buddhist thought, women were considered impure. Women were weaker beings of lower status than men. Or rather, I should say that they were expected to be weaker than men. Beings rejected from the core of society in this way are easily transformed into monsters, because those in power are constantly in fear that the societal value system will be reversed. In other words—they fear that the oppressed will rise up against their oppressors.”

The students, both male and female, listened to him with solemn expressions.

Takatsuki looked around at them slowly as he went on.

Just then, for only a moment, Naoya thought he saw Takatsuki frown.

Curious, he followed the professor’s gaze to the back of the classroom.

The university’s lectures had unreserved seating. In most courses, the seats filled up from the middle to the back, but Takatsuki’s always filled up from the front, perhaps because of his good looks. With today’s low attendance, Naoya had thought the back few rows were empty.

But now that he looked, he saw that there was a man in a suit sitting in the corner of the very back row.

His face was unfamiliar.

He seemed relatively young, like he was perhaps a graduate student or faculty member from another university who was dropping in on the class. He didn’t really give off the vibes of a researcher, though.

Naoya continued to look over his shoulder, wondering who the man could be, when Takatsuki gently cleared his throat.

Hastily turning back around, he locked eyes with Takatsuki, who was continuing with his lecture as though nothing had happened, for just a moment. Naoya shrank down into his seat, feeling like he’d been scolded with a look. Takatsuki was, as always, very observant.

“Hey, Fukamachi! Long time no see!”

After class, as Naoya was packing up his things, a voice called out to him from behind.

He turned around to see Youichi Nanba, another student in the History Department, standing there.

“It’s been a while… Wait a minute. Don’t you take the same class as me during second period, too?”

“I overslept. It was past two o’clock when I woke up.”

“Come on, you can’t expect my internal clock to reset to pre-summer vacation time that quickly.”

“Make it reset. I mean, what were you even doing over summer break?”

“You should be praising me for doing my best to make it to Professor Takatsuki’s class, at least,” Nanba said, puffing out his chest.

Offering Nanba some half-hearted praise, Naoya looked back to see that the man in the suit was already gone. Takatsuki also seemed to have left the classroom in a hurry.

Picking up his bag, Naoya left the room with Nanba.

“As usual, Professor Takatsuki’s lectures are so interesting!” Nanba said, stretching both arms over his head. “I’m seriously thinking of majoring in folklore, starting next year. I want to write my thesis on Jet Granny!”

His arms and his face were both much more tanned than they had been before summer break. Looking at his darkened complexion, which spoke to just how much he had enjoyed his vacation, Naoya asked, “Nanba, you’re really tan. Did you go on a trip?”

“Ah, this is from my club’s training camp. We went to the beach, so I got seriously cooked.”

“…Wait, remind me what club you’re in again?”

“Tennis.”

“Why would a tennis club go to the beach for training camp?”

“We played tennis, too. I mean, technically. Our club is pretty laid-back. We do actually practice and play friendly matches with other clubs, but it’s not like we train hard and try to enter tournaments or whatever. Our motto is ‘Let’s enjoy our youth!’”

Nanba grinned. That kind of saying certainly did seem to suit him.

“You’re not that tanned, Fukamachi. Didn’t you say you were going on a trip? You went with Professor Takatsuki on some fieldwork, right?”

“Oh yeah, I did. But we went to the mountains, not the sea.”

“…Well. A lot happened. But I managed to make it back.”

“What’s that mean? Did you go somewhere super deep in the mountains? Like to some scary haunted ruins?”

“There were no ruins… But I guess you could say there were ghosts.”

“Wait, really?! What? Come on, spill— Ah, sorry.”

Nanba took out his phone. It looked like he had a LINE message.

“Oh crap, I gotta go. Tell me about your trip sometime soon! See ya!”

Nanba ran off in a hurry. He was already at the end of the corridor when he turned around and called, “Sorry!” one more time in a loud voice, causing other students to look around in surprise.

Naoya saw him off with a grin. Nanba probably hadn’t called out to him originally for any particular reason, so Naoya didn’t think there was any reason for him to apologize so much.

Or more to the point, Nanba was the only person who would call out to Naoya without a reason.

Among the other students, Naoya was simply the “plain-looking glasses guy.”

Naoya was careful not to get on anyone’s bad side, and he responded normally if someone spoke to him, but he always endeavored to be as inconspicuous as possible, so that the people around him would have no more awareness of him than, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s a quiet kid who wears glasses like that.” The university was a big place with a lot of people in it, so it was easy to go unknown if one wanted to. Naoya was pretty sure that there were very few people, even in his same year and department, who remembered his name.

That was the sort of life Naoya had chosen for himself long ago.

He didn’t mind it, and he thought it was a bit late to change things now.

Originally, his connection to Nanba had been that they were in the same language class their first year. Nanba was naturally the sort of guy to talk to anyone, but ever since a certain incident had happened at the end of the previous year, it felt like they had gotten closer than before.

Don’t get too close to anyone. Keep to the lines drawn around himself and don’t reach beyond them.

Those were the rules for living with the power of his ears.

And yet…

Naoya remembered the bright golden sparks that had flashed in his mind in the impenetrable darkness, and he turned his gaze reflexively in the direction Nanba had gone.

Nanba had been there, too—in the memories Naoya had recalled at Yomotsu Hirasaka.

“Aw, come on. This is what people are supposed to do for each other.”

Surely, to Nanba, that moment hadn’t been a big deal at all.

But to Naoya…it had truly made him happy.

Readjusting his bag on his shoulder and continuing down the hall by himself, Naoya let out a small sigh.

“Tell me about your trip sometime soon,” Nanba had said.

Naturally, Naoya couldn’t tell him the whole story. Even if he did, there was no way Nanba would believe it, and telling him the entire thing would mean having to tell him about his ears as well.

But—someday…

Just for a moment, Naoya thought, by some chance—over drinks or something, in a half-joking way, for instance—if he could tell Nanba all about it…that would be fine.

Not too long after that, Takatsuki sent him a message.

“I want to talk to you about work a bit. If you’re still at the college, can you come to my office?”

Naoya had just been about to go home after wrapping up some work in the library. He sent back a “Be right there” and headed for the faculty building.

He knocked on the door of room 304 on the third floor.

“Come in,” a soft, clear voice called, and Naoya opened the door.

“Ah, sorry for the sudden summons. But I’m glad you were still here.”

“…Did you have a client?” Naoya asked, seeing the Great Buddha cup sitting on the corner of the small table, looking as though it had been used. That was the mug visitors used when they came to the office. The smell of coffee hung thickly in the air.

Most of the requests Takatsuki received came by e-mail through his website, Neighborhood Stories. But this time, unexpectedly, it seemed someone had come to talk to him in person.

“Yeah, he just left. He said he wants me to deal with things as quickly as possible, so I thought I would tell you about it right away. Oh—the graduate students brought me gifts from their summer vacations again, so feel free to eat whatever you’d like. There are unsweetened rice crackers.”

Takatsuki waved at Naoya to sit down as he spoke. The pile of regional snacks stacked up on the large table was a regular feature of the office after summer break. Naoya gratefully accepted a rice cracker.

Takatsuki put a dog-patterned mug of coffee in front of Naoya and sat down beside him with a blue mug of marshmallow cocoa in one hand.

“So actually, this request…it came from a relative of mine.”

“A relative?”

“Yep. I think you saw his face earlier. Remember, there was someone who came into the classroom during the middle of the lecture?”

“Oh, him.”

The man in the suit.

Leaning back in his folding chair, Takatsuki took a sip of cocoa.

“He’s my cousin, actually. He’s five years younger than me.”

“Huh?”

“There’s no need to be so surprised.”

Takatsuki smirked.

And given Takatsuki’s family situation, it was a tad surprising that any relative of his would come to him directly with a request.

“I mean, I was surprised, too,” Takatsuki said, sardonic expression still in place. “After all, I don’t usually have any contact with my family or relatives. The last time I saw my cousin was before I went to England. It’s been over twenty years. We weren’t particularly close, so it really caught me off guard that he suddenly dropped in.”

“If that’s the case, what kind of request did he bring to you?”

“About that…”

Taking another sip of cocoa, Takatsuki frowned.

“Fukamachi, do you know what a human-faced tumor is?”

“A human-faced tumor…? Um, isn’t it a growth in the shape of a human face?”

“Yeah. Well, it seems that’s what’s happened.”

“What?! To your cousin?”

“No, to his fiancée… Yuuto isn’t the kind of guy who would go out of his way to come tell me something like that as a joke. He’s always been a very serious kid.”

Takatsuki began to explain.

Yuuto Takatsuki—that was his cousin’s name.

Takatsuki’s mother had two younger brothers. The older of the two brothers was Wataru. The younger was Hiroya.

Yuuto was Hiroya’s only son.

“Uncle Hiroya is the president of a group enterprise that my father runs. Yuuto also works there. It seems a marriage proposal was raised recently. The other party is the daughter of an executive at one of their client companies, a woman named Mikako Takamura. She’s twenty-six.”

“Is that what they call a ‘political marriage’?”

“What, they’re getting to know each other after getting engaged?”

“It was already decided between their families that they’re getting married. That’s how political marriages work. I mean, they’ve at least been acquainted with each other since they were little because of their parents’ connection. But they only really started talking after getting engaged, and it’s still quite early days, apparently. They were thinking they’d just get to know each other gradually from now on—but then something strange happened.”

It had happened several days ago.

Yuuto had gone to Mikako’s apartment, where she lived alone, and for a moment when she opened the door to greet him, he had thought she was someone else.

“Yuuto had been away on business for a while, so they hadn’t seen each other in a month. Miss Mikako became very thin in that time. She looked pale, too, and Yuuto was worried she had gotten seriously ill or something like that.”

Apparently, Mikako had tried at first to brush off his concern with, “I’m fine,” and “I just caught a little cold.” However, seeing that she was also less talkative than usual and in low spirits, Yuuto told her, “If something’s wrong, I want you to tell me about it.”

When he did, Mikako burst into tears.

As she cried, she opened the front of her blouse and showed Yuuto her right shoulder.

Stuck there, on the rounded edge of her shoulder, was some blood-stained gauze.

The moment Mikako pulled the gauze away, Yuuto gasped.

Sobbing, Mikako had turned her face away from her right shoulder and said, “Look. It looks just like a human face, doesn’t it?”

When Yuuto asked why this was happening, Mikako had cried and said she didn’t know. She told him her shoulder had felt itchy for a few days before the skin started swelling rapidly, and then the night before, it had suddenly split open.

Mikako had shaken her head when Yuuto asked if she had been to a doctor. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her arm, it was so repulsive, she said. They couldn’t simply ignore a wound that was bleeding, however. Yuuto had wanted to bring Mikako to a doctor, even if he had to drag her there.

Mikako had resisted.

She had shaken her head back and forth, crying, saying she wouldn’t go, no matter what.

“Why is Miss Mikako so reluctant to go to a doctor?” Naoya asked, finding the situation odd. “She clearly has a skin abnormality. And it’s bleeding, so it must hurt.”

Takatsuki’s eyes narrowed a little.

“That’s because, apparently, Mikako had previously read a book about human-faced tumors. She’s convinced that’s what the growth on her shoulder is. It seems she’s adamant that she doesn’t want a doctor or even her parents to know she has something like that on her body.”

“But then… To consult you… No matter how much of an expert you are in folklore…”

“As a matter of fact, it was Miss Mikako who wanted to consult me.”

“Huh?”

“She asked Yuuto to contact me, apparently.”

Takatsuki dropped his gaze to the mug he was holding in both hands.

Slowly, the corners of his lips turned upward.

It wasn’t his usual bright smile, though. Instead, a slightly warped grin formed on his mouth, and Takatsuki said in a dry voice, “Mikako told Yuuto, ‘I’m sure Tengu-sama will do something about this.’”

Naoya’s eyes widened at those words.

—“Tengu-sama.”

It was a name Takatsuki used to be called.

A fantasy that his mother had forced upon him when he returned from being spirited away.

A month’s disappearance and no recollection of that time. Strange scars on his back and eyes that sometimes changed color. An abnormally improved memory and an excessive fear of birds. Takatsuki’s mother had desperately wanted to know what had happened to her beloved son to cause such things, but neither the police nor the doctors had been able to give her a clear answer. With no leads whatsoever, the case went unsolved. Not even the cause of Takatsuki’s eyes changing color was known.

And so his mother had escaped.

She had escaped into the fantasy that her son had been kidnapped by tengu.

In her mind, Takatsuki had been turned into a tengu before having his wings cut off and being returned to this world. That was how she interpreted the scars on his back.

And to further strengthen her own fantasy, his mother tried to spread it to the people around her.

As the daughter of the president of a large company, she had connections to the wives of the executives at the companies her father managed and to the wives of their clients. She introduced Takatsuki to those women as the “Tengu’s Child” and put his special abilities on display.

To those women, the beautiful young boy who could easily pinpoint the location of lost items and solve any problem must have seemed as if he had clairvoyance.

Before long, they were devoted to Takatsuki, hailing him as “Tengu-sama.”

Takatsuki sighed softly.

To a small girl, Takatsuki may truly have appeared to be a deity—the Tengu-sama who could do anything and helped those in need.

Naoya looked at Takatsuki’s profile.

“Professor… Did you accept the request?”

“Yeah. I did,” Takatsuki said, smiling brightly and turning to Naoya. “If it works for you, I’d like to go to Miss Mikako’s place tomorrow or the day after—”

“—You should turn it down.”

Takatsuki fell momentarily silent at Naoya’s interruption.

Then he smiled awkwardly.

“Why? I already said I would take it, so it’s too late to turn it down.”

“But I mean…”

Takatsuki’s memories of being the Tengu’s Child were likely a big open wound he shouldn’t touch. On a previous trip to Yamanashi, a woman who used to attend those tea parties had called him Tengu-sama, and that alone was enough to give him nightmares.

It was bound to be a burden for Takatsuki to face someone who not only referred to him as Tengu-sama, but who was also counting on his “divine” abilities.

“…You’re such a worrier, Fukamachi.”

Takatsuki’s face crinkled up into a smile.

He leaned forward, one elbow on the table, resting his chin in his hand, and looked at Naoya through narrowed eyes.

“KenKen’s overprotectiveness has totally rubbed off on you. Good grief, I’m surrounded by worrywarts.”

“That’s because you’re always on the verge of some kind of trouble.”

“I’m telling you, I’m fine… See? I’m not lying, am I?”

It was true that his voice hadn’t distorted. It was as soft and clear as ever.

But this was Takatsuki. There was a good chance he was neatly dodging the truth.

And besides, even if he himself thought he was fine, that didn’t mean he was right.

Then, after watching Naoya for a little while, Takatsuki made a big show of letting out a sigh and suddenly said, “Hmmm, I see. Since my part-timer isn’t feeling too keen, I guess I’ll just go deal with this request by myself.”

“Huh? What are you talking about, Professor?”

“Well, you see, Yuuto will come to pick me up anyway, so I won’t need help navigating. And I’m sure I won’t lose my sense of reason and get carried away this time.”

“H-hold on a minute—!”

Naoya glared at Takatsuki in a little bit of a panic, wondering how they had gotten here. It was obviously way worse to let Takatsuki go on this job alone.

But Takatsuki shook his head, looking disappointed, and said, “I’d really like you to come with me, Fukamachi, but if you really don’t want to, then I guess there’s nothing I can do. Well then, sorry for calling you here today, but this time—”

“—Augh, fine, I get it!” Naoya yelled, resigned. “I’m sorry for interfering, since I am just a part-timer, after all! I’ll go, too, so please let me accompany you!”

Takatsuki grinned triumphantly at him. The man really was so childish. I should tell Sasakura about this, Naoya thought.

The following evening, Yuuto Takatsuki came to pick them up in front of the university gates. When he saw Naoya, his brow furrowed suspiciously.

“Yuuto, this is Fukamachi. He’s a student who assists me. He’ll be coming along today.”

“…I intended for this consultation to be private,” Yuuto mumbled.

Takatsuki continued to smile.

“I accepted your request about human-faced tumors purely as a folklore specialist. You don’t really believe in the whole ‘power of the Tengu-sama,’ do you?”

“…”

Frowning, Yuuto silently jutted his chin toward the back seat of the car. He seemed to be telling them to get in.

Once Takatsuki and Naoya had climbed into the back seat, Yuuto started driving.

From his seat diagonally behind Yuuto, Naoya stealthily examined the man.

Even looked at up close like this, he really didn’t resemble Takatsuki at all. That fact might have been made even more evident because Wataru, their uncle, looked so much like the professor. Yuuto had stiff, jet-black hair, smooth eyelids, and somewhat thinnish facial features. Even though they were both wearing suits, Yuuto really just looked like an office worker when compared to Takatsuki, who could have been a model… Although Takatsuki and Wataru were probably the ones who were outside the norm.

To make matters worse, there was a clear aura of prickliness surrounding Yuuto.

Even though he had been the one to come ask for help, he didn’t seem inclined to speak to Takatsuki in the car. On the contrary, Yuuto stared straight ahead, as if to discourage them from speaking to him. He seemed, quite frankly, unpleasant.

Despite this, Takatsuki appeared totally unbothered and began to reminisce to Naoya with a smile on his face.

“…Is that so?”

In other words, Takatsuki was to Yuuto what Kazu was to Naoya. But at least from looking at the Yuuto of the present, it was really hard to imagine him following the professor around and calling him Aki.

Even so, Takatsuki smiled nostalgically and went on.

“We used to play together at family gatherings. Yuuto was the only cousin I had, so I adored him. This was a long time ago, mind you.”

“—It’s ancient history,” Yuuto said in a low voice, still facing forward. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring up stories from when I was in kindergarten now. I’m thirty years old already.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have many memories of Yuuto after that time. At some point, he started to avoid me.”

Takatsuki gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. There was no malice in his voice.

Yuuto didn’t say anything more but simply turned the wheel a little roughly as he rounded a corner.

Watching him, Naoya thought, Oh, he probably never wanted to come to Takatsuki at all. He had had no choice but to do so because his fiancée had begged him. Takatsuki himself had said that he and Yuuto weren’t particularly close, that it had been over twenty years since they last met… That alone was proof of how estranged they were.

Perhaps Takatsuki shouldn’t have accepted this request after all, Naoya thought, glancing over at the professor.

He didn’t have a very good impression of Takatsuki’s family and relatives.

Given what Naoya had heard from Sasakura, Wataru, and Takatsuki himself, it didn’t seem like a single member of his family had been kind to Takatsuki since the kamikakushi incident.

Beside him, Takatsuki was gazing out the window at the passing scenery. His usual smile was on his face, but Naoya had long since learned not to trust that smile.

Recently, Naoya had begun to feel that more strongly than before.

The boundary between reality and another world, between the ordinary and the extraordinary.

And—the boundary between a kind world illuminated by bright light and a dark world so cold, it was almost freezing.

Sasakura, Wataru, and Ruiko were in the brighter world. As long as Takatsuki was facing that side, he could keep smiling and living happily.

On the other side, however, the darkness surrounding Takatsuki’s past swirled around in an ill-boding maelstrom, stretching out cold, grasping fingers to drag the professor into its midst.

Next to Naoya, Takatsuki was still looking out the window. Night was spreading out before his gaze.

Rows of streetlamps and car headlights shone through the window onto Takatsuki’s pale cheeks. His eyes seemed to flash blue, and Naoya startled.

“…What’s wrong, Fukamachi?”

Takatsuki looked over at him, quizzical, and his eyes were the same kind dark brown as usual. Hastily shaking his head, Naoya replied that it was nothing.

Eventually, the car stopped in front of a small white apartment building.

They followed Yuuto to Mikako’s apartment where, as though she had been waiting for them, the door opened immediately to reveal a long-haired woman.

She was a beautiful woman with Japanese features and large, striking almond-shaped eyes. Her hair was down, untied, and deep black. It gave her a somewhat serious appearance but also accentuated the paleness of her skin, making her look just like a doll. Just as Yuuto had told them, however, it was obvious at a glance how thin she was.

“Tengu-sama…!”

The moment she saw Takatsuki’s face, Mikako covered her mouth with both hands, overcome with emotion. Blood rushed to her cheeks, and her dark eyes shone with heat. Seeing this, Yuuto frowned slightly.

Takatsuki smiled amiably.

“Good evening. It’s been quite some time, Miss Mikako Takamura.”

Both hands still over her mouth, Mikako’s shoulders immediately began trembling, and her eyes opened wide.

“Tengu-sama… You…remember me…?”

“Of course. I met you a few times at my mother’s tea parties, although we were children at the time. Please don’t call me that, however. My name is Akira Takatsuki. I teach at a university now.”

“…Ah, I, I’m sorry. How rude of me!”

Mikako suddenly straightened up, as if coming to her senses. She put her hands to her cheeks, like she was embarrassed at herself for getting excited, and bowed her head vigorously.

Her hair slipped off her right shoulder, and Naoya couldn’t help but glance at it. She was wearing a thin red cardigan over her white blouse, so it was impossible to tell from the outside whether there was anything particularly odd about her shoulder. According to Yuuto, though, that’s where the human-faced tumor was.

“Um, you’re an associate professor at Seiwa University, right? Yuuto told me. Thank you for making time to see me today, Professor Takatsuki. Please come in.”

She welcomed Takatsuki inside, and Yuuto and Naoya followed him.

The one-bedroom apartment was neatly organized. The furniture and carpet were a soft, calming color, and the casually placed items around the room were all elegant, but for the worn-out, old teddy bear sitting on the sofa. It was charming, somehow. In one corner of the living room sat a bookshelf and a desk that seemed to be for working at, with books on English conversation and interpretation placed on them.

Takatsuki picked up the bear, which had been tossed to the floor.

He stared at its rather well-loved muzzle, and Naoya cocked his head to the side.

“What’s wrong, Professor?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” Takatsuki replied, carefully setting the bear back down on the carpet, before sitting on the sofa. Naoya took the seat beside him.

“Do you work as an interpreter, Miss Mikako?” Takatsuki asked, and Mikako gave him a stiff smile from the kitchen where she was preparing the tea.

“I used to work at a company, but I studied abroad last year, and now I’m studying to become an interpreter… It seems I’ll be marrying Yuuto before that, however.”

“Mikako is a really hard worker. I’d like to give her my support even after we get married.”

Yuuto was in the kitchen helping Mikako when he chimed in.

“She told me about her time studying abroad with a lot of enthusiasm at the matchmaking session, too. I also studied abroad when I was in college, so we had a lot to talk about. Her younger sister is studying abroad now instead. They’re both very studious. I think it’s great.”

As he smiled at Mikako, Yuuto’s face was gentle and warm. Naoya had thought he was a bit of a nasty person in the car, but apparently, he was just cold toward Takatsuki.

As the couch only sat two people, Yuuto and Mikako sat down on the carpet, facing each other, with a low table between them. When tea was served, the scent of Earl Grey wafted into the air.

“Now, then,” Takatsuki said. “Let’s get to the matter at hand. Miss Mikako—if you don’t mind, I’d like to see the human-faced tumor that you have.”

He nodded, and Mikako took off her cardigan. The blouse underneath was sleeveless.

There, on her right shoulder—or perhaps more accurately, in the area of the root of her upper arm—was indeed a human face.

No—that wasn’t right.

The skin in that area was raised like a keloid. It was discolored, a dark shade of red, and swollen in irregular lumps, merely giving it the appearance of a human face.

The problem was, once Naoya was aware of the likeness, it was hard to see it in any other way. The long, narrow bump in the center looked like a nose, the sagging wrinkles on either side of that made for two closed eyelids, and the straight cut running beneath it was like a pursed mouth. The entire thing was approximately three inches in size.

It was truly something that could only be called a human-faced tumor.

“—Excuse me. Can I take a closer look?” Takatsuki asked, already standing up from the couch to kneel beside Mikako.

Takatsuki didn’t seem to notice the startled Yuuto, who had for a moment looked like he was about to object. Grabbing Mikako’s arm and pulling it toward himself, Takatsuki leaned his face in to peer at the tumor.

Then he began touching it with his fingers. Unheeding of Mikako’s self-conscious squirming, he pressed the tumor’s various features—the eyelids, nose, cheeks—in turn, just like a doctor palpating something.

“Does this hurt?” he asked.

Mikako, her expression bewildered, said it didn’t.

Lastly, Takatsuki touched the wound that looked like a mouth, and it was only then that Mikako’s face contorted.

“That hurts,” she said in a small voice.

“I see. Thank you very much.”

Takatsuki left Mikako’s side and returned to the sofa.

“So then, what exactly is this? Is it really, you know, a human-faced tumor?”

“—First, I’d like to hear from Miss Mikako about it for a bit.

The professor smiled and looked at Mikako.

“It seems you already have some knowledge of human-faced tumors, yes? Which books did you read?”

“U-um… In college, I studied early modern literature,” Mikako replied, lowering her gaze. “I read Otogibōko and Ehon Hyaku Monogatari…”

At that, Takatsuki leaned forward, his face brightening.

“I see, so you’ve read those two! There are indeed stories about human-faced tumors in both. And they’re both very interesting, aren’t they?”

“…What books are those?” Yuuto asked, his expression saying he wasn’t following.

Takatsuki smiled.

“They’re both collections of ghost stories that were published in the Edo period. There’s a story in Otogibōko that is actually called ‘Human-Faced Tumor,’ which tells of a farmer from Ogura in Yamashiro Province who developed a sore in the shape of a human face on his left thigh. The text says the sore is ‘alike to a human face in form, with eyes and a mouth, but no nose or ears.’ That makes it a bit different from Miss Mikako’s, which seems to have a nose.”

Takatsuki looked to Mikako with a smile, as if for confirmation.

Mikako tilted her head slightly with a baffled face. She probably didn’t understand why the professor had suddenly started talking in such a delighted tone.

But Takatsuki was in his element like this. He went on, speaking just as he did during lectures.

“…No, not really.”

“I see.”

Takatsuki smiled again.

Despite stating that he wasn’t going to get carried away this time, he seemed to be quite enjoying himself. Naoya wondered for a moment whether to stop him. He appeared to be calmer than he was in his usual large dog mode, so Naoya figured it was probably fine to leave him be for a while longer.

“In the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, the story about a human-faced tumor is titled ‘Two-Mouthed Woman.’ Although the term ‘human-faced boil’ is used rather than ‘human-faced tumor.’ The two-mouthed woman is a monster with an additional mouth on the back of her head, but in this book, the extra mouth is said to be a human-faced boil and is treated as a malady. As examples, it cites a woman who starved her stepchild to death and grew a mouth on the back of her head, as well as one who develops a human-faced boil after tripping during an argument with her father, in which the boil is considered a consequence of the woman’s malicious thought. The text says that human-faced boils are a disease seen in callous, wicked, selfish, shameless people… Is this perhaps why you didn’t want your parents or a doctor to know, Miss Mikako?”

At Takatsuki’s question, Mikako drew her shoulders in and nodded.

Yuuto put a hand on her shoulder and glared angrily at Takatsuki.

“Hold on, that’s the kind of woman you think she is? You think that’s why something like this is happening? There’s no way that’s true!”

“Of course, the idea that human-faced tumors are a disease that occur as recompense for one’s wrongdoings is an old way of thought. We modern people must interpret them differently.”

Takatsuki spoke in a calm tone, returning Yuuto’s gaze head-on. Cowed, Yuuto fell silent.

“Although a realistic interpretation of human-faced tumors was already given in the Edo period. In Fude no Susabi, a collection of essays written by Kan Chazan, an article about human-faced tumors written by court physician Katsuragawa Hoken is cited. It clearly states that the wounds, depressions, and dents of the affected area merely resemble mouths and eyelids and noses. It also says that any apparent breathing is the result of the area twitching, and that the tumor is called a human face only because of its shape. People are naturally susceptible to seeing things as human faces. For example, we recognize three circles arranged in an inverted triangle as a human face. Or we may associate two entirely different things with each other simply because their visual impression is similar, and those associations may become fixed in our brains. This is the kind of psychological phenomenon that causes us to see a human face in a stain on the ceiling or in a power outlet, or a rabbit on the moon. It’s just an optical illusion. Unfortunately, most pictures of ghosts can be explained this way.”

Naoya had learned about this topic in one of the previous year’s lectures.

As he recalled, it had been a lecture on dogs and fish with human faces. The three circles was an example of the simulacra phenomenon, and the ceiling stain looking like a human face was due to the pareidolia effect.

“Some theories posit that human-faced tumors may have been elephantiasis. It’s a disease caused by parasitic filariasis that was rampant in Japan during the Edo period. There’s a story that Saigo Takamori had it. When you have elephantiasis, your skin thickens and swells a great deal and becomes tough, like an elephant’s. But that’s probably not what you have, Miss Mikako. The symptoms are different.”

Takatsuki leaned forward, looking at Mikako.

Mikako, who until moments before had looked confused, had at some point lifted her head to stare at Takatsuki. In her eyes, Naoya could see a gleam of passion similar to the one she’d displayed when first seeing the professor.

A slight chill ran through Naoya at that look.

What in the world was this woman thinking as she gazed at Takatsuki?

“So, then,” Mikako said in a lightly trembling voice. “What on earth should I do?”

“Please go to a doctor,” Takatsuki answered with a bright smile. “I recommend treatment from a dermatologist. You may be left with a scar, but I believe you could expect some results.”

Mikako shook her head slowly.

“I don’t want to go to a doctor. It won’t work.”

“Ah, so you have already been to the hospital, then?”

At Takatsuki’s words, Yuuto looked at Mikako in surprise. From what he knew, she hadn’t been to see a doctor.

“Yuuto said that you only developed the human-faced tumor several days ago… But that’s not true, is it? When I touched it earlier, you told me it didn’t hurt in most parts. Only the cut that had bled recently hurt, you said. I suspect this growth on your shoulder has been there for quite some time.”

“No, it’s recent.”

Mikako’s voice distorted as she answered, and Naoya reflexively put a hand to his ear.

The corners of Takatsuki’s lips turned up in a grin.

“Miss Mikako, you shouldn’t lie.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Hey…!”

Perhaps thinking Takatsuki’s words were too much, Yuuto raised his voice.

Takatsuki, however, merely looked at Mikako, paying Yuuto no attention.

“What I am interested in is the reason you told that lie. What on earth are you hoping for, to go as far as making up a bizarre story about having a human-faced tumor on your shoulder?”

Takatsuki’s gaze was fixed on Mikako’s eyes.

“Your aim—it was me, wasn’t it?”

Yuuto looked at Mikako in shock.

Naoya stared at her, too. For some reason, he had a terrible sense of foreboding.

Mikako sat up straight under their three gazes, and—slowly, her mouth turned up into a beguiling smile.

“It’s because…I’ve wanted to see you. For so long.”

Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes glistened.

She called out to Takatsuki, her voice like a sensual sigh.

“Tengu-sama. I…wanted to see you.”

At that moment, Takatsuki stood up from the sofa.

With a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he looked down at Mikako and said without preamble, “I’m leaving. We will not be meeting again.”

“Please wait, Tengu-sama!”

“Let’s go, Fukamachi.”

Naoya got up at Takatsuki’s urging. Yuuto, unable to keep up with the situation, looked back and forth between Takatsuki and Mikako in confusion.

But as Takatsuki and Naoya were heading for the door—

“Please wait!”

As he stopped and turned to look back, Takatsuki’s face suddenly stiffened.

What now? Naoya thought, also turning to look, only to see Mikako standing there holding a large birdcage.

“Tengu-sama, I remember. I remember when I met you as a child.”

The door to what appeared to be a bedroom had been thrown open at some point, and Mikako seemed to have brought the birdcage from there. Inside was a red bird that looked like a large parakeet. Startled at suddenly being moved, the bird flapped its large wings wildly. The sound echoed in Naoya’s ears.

Takatsuki’s body swayed violently, and Naoya hurriedly moved to support him from the side.

He wasn’t unconscious, but his face had gone pale. Yuuto shot to his feet in alarm. One hand pressed to his forehead, Takatsuki looked at Mikako with his face distorted in anguish.

“Miss Mikako. What are you…?”

“Tengu-sama. You’re still afraid of birds, aren’t you? You really haven’t changed at all since those days.”

Mikako spoke in a singsong voice. In the cage she was holding, the parakeet continued to flap its wings. Takatsuki shook with powerful tremors.

“I wonder where your fear comes from? You know everything, but perhaps this is the one thing you still don’t understand.”

Smiling, Mikako held the birdcage out toward him.

“Tengu-sama. Auntie waits for you, even now. Let’s go back together, to those garden tea parties… Please, Tengu-sama…”

Mikako’s sugared whispers mixed with the flapping of the bird’s wings.

Takatsuki’s knees gave way.

“Professor!”

“…Aki!”

Yuuto rushed over to support Takatsuki from the other side.

Still holding the birdcage, Mikako was giggling softly. The shoulders of her cardigan had slipped down, revealing the strange, face-shaped growth. She seemed to have hit it against something, as the wound underneath it was once again opened wide. The red, torn gash looked just like a mouth spitting blood and cursing them. Even though he knew it was just an optical illusion, a chill coursed down Naoya’s spine.

He shouldn’t have brought Takatsuki here after all.

Leaving Mikako’s apartment like they were making an escape, Naoya and Yuuto carried Takatsuki to the car.

Thankfully, Takatsuki didn’t seem to have completely lost consciousness, though he looked quite unwell. At Yuuto seeing him resting limply against the window, breathing shallowly, his face turned pale as well.

“Are you okay? Maybe you should go to a hospital or something.”

“…It’s like a minor bit of anemia, so I’ll be fine if I rest,” Takatsuki replied with a weak smile. “I’m sorry, Yuuto… I wasn’t much help, and I’ve caused you trouble.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” Yuuto muttered. “Sorry for dragging you into it… I never imagined things would end up like this.”

The sharpness that had been present in Yuuto’s voice on the car ride to the apartment was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Naoya said as Yuuto sat in the driver’s seat. “If possible, it would be really helpful if you could give us a ride to the professor’s apartment.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Giving an immediate reply, Yuuto made to start driving.

The moment he gripped the steering wheel, however, he turned around.

“…Where are you living now?” he mumbled, his expression a little embarrassed.

When Naoya gave him the address, he nodded wordlessly and took off.

What was it? Just what on earth had that woman been trying to do?

“…Hey, Yuuto,” Takatsuki said. “Does Miss Mikako still meet with my mother?”

Earlier, Mikako had said, “Auntie waits for you, even now.”

That “Auntie” was probably in reference to Takatsuki’s mother.

“I don’t know,” Yuuto replied. “Because of work, my parents probably have more direct contact with the Takamura family than yours, but…I can’t say for sure that she doesn’t.”

Putting a hand to his forehead, Takatsuki exhaled slowly and met Yuuto’s gaze through the rearview mirror.

“My mother, what’s she like now…? She wasn’t able to leave the house for a while, I believe.”

“She recovered a while back. I’m pretty sure she’s socializing a fair bit. I see her at family gatherings, and—from what I’ve seen—she seems normal.”

“I see… Well, that’s good.”

Takatsuki’s quiet response came out on an exhalation.

Naoya knew that Takatsuki’s mother had once had a complete break with reality.

Her delusion that he was the Tengu’s Child was born of her love for her son. It was the only interpretation she could accept to explain the void in his past.

But that only ended up driving her son, Takatsuki, into a corner.

After all, no one suffered more because of that void than Takatsuki himself.

Every time his mother called him the Tengu’s Child or hailed him as a living deity, Takatsuki became even more confused. Was he human? A god? Or a monster with clipped wings?

“I’m done.”

He said that he wasn’t the Tengu’s Child, that he couldn’t behave the way she wanted anymore.

That, however, was a direct denial of the fantasy she lived in.

Her already taxed nerves took it as a rejection from her son.

She couldn’t bear it, and so she began to deny the very existence of the boy right there in front of her.

There was no way her beloved son would have rejected her.

The “thing” in front of her couldn’t possibly have been her son—that was what she thought.

Takatsuki’s mother found a new fantasy and shut herself away inside of it.

In that fantasy, her son had not yet returned.

Eventually, she was no longer even aware of Takatsuki. She didn’t reply when he spoke to her, didn’t react when he touched her; she didn’t even seem to be able to see him. No—to her, Takatsuki had truly disappeared.

Unable to bear it, Takatsuki’s father had sent him to live with Wataru. Since then, Takatsuki hadn’t seen his own mother even once.

Naoya looked at the professor. He was leaning fully into his seat, with his eyes closed. His breathing seemed better than before, but his face was still a little pale.

“Professor, are you okay? You’re not feeling carsick or anything, are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m already feeling a lot better.”

Takatsuki opened his eyes and turned to Naoya with a small smile.

“So don’t even think about reporting to KenKen about today, Fukamachi.”

“Wh-what do you…? It’s not like I’m a spy.”

“Lately, I feel like you and KenKen have formed an overprotective alliance toward me.”

“Don’t worry; no such alliance exists,” Naoya told him.

It wasn’t like he had lied. He didn’t recall forming any alliance like that… It was just that, as someone often near Takatsuki, he felt it necessary to share information with his guardian, to a certain extent.

As he drove, Yuuto spoke up again.

“—Listen. About Mikako.”

Takatsuki and Naoya looked at him, and he kept his gaze facing forward.

“Just…I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. She’s usually not like that at all. She’s a very kind, sensible person. I think the reason she’s acting strange is because of that weird growth on her shoulder.”

“But the thing on her shoulder must have been there for a while,” Takatsuki said. “You said you hadn’t seen her in a while, but that wasn’t something that developed just in the last month or so. It’s a lot older than that… You didn’t know about it?”

“That’s because…I mean, until now, she hadn’t told me anything about it,” Yuuto stammered, his tone becoming oddly evasive.

Takatsuki tilted his head to the side.

“Wait, is it possible you never saw Miss Mikako’s shoulder before this incident?”

“Uh, it’s… Well, I hadn’t had the chance.”

Yuuto’s stammering grew worse at Takatsuki’s question. Takatsuki looked at him, puzzled. Yuuto wasn’t just dating Mikako on the assumption that they would get married; they were already engaged. Naoya wondered how it was possible to never see the shoulders of the other party in that situation.

“Um…Yuuto, when was it that you and Miss Mikako got engaged?”

“…July.”

“…You’re a late bloomer, huh?”

“…Like I said! We’re both busy, so we haven’t been able to see each other that much! We’ve only been on a few dates!”

“Yuuto, eyes forward! You’re driving! It’s dangerous!”

Yuuto quickly faced forward again, but it was clear even from behind that he was blushing all the way to his ears. Exchanging glances with Takatsuki, Naoya almost burst out laughing. He had thought Yuuto was an unpleasant person at first, but it turned out he was actually surprisingly adorable.

By the time they arrived at the apartment, Takatsuki’s complexion had improved considerably. His legs no longer seemed wobbly as he got out of the car.

Yuuto also got out and turned to Takatsuki to apologize once more.

“I’m really sorry about this… I’ll meet up with Mikako when things have calmed down and talk to her. She really isn’t normally like that. I’m sure something must have happened. I’ll listen to what she has to say and try to find a good doctor for her shoulder issue.”

“Yeah, sure. I think that would be a good idea,” Takatsuki said, nodding.

Then, looking at Yuuto again, he smiled brightly.

Yuuto, tucking his chin in slightly, stared back at him.

“Wh-what is it?”

“I was just thinking that you must really like Miss Mikako.”

“…What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It’s just that when you first came to consult with me, I thought it was because you felt you had to, as her fiancé, or that it was for the sake of the company… I thought it was just a political marriage arranged between your families, but could it be that she was actually your first love?”

“Sh-she wasn’t my first love!” Yuuto said, blushing again.

Takatsuki glanced over at Naoya, who shook his head to convey that Yuuto wasn’t lying. There was no distortion in his voice. As if to say, “That’s no fun,” Takatsuki shrugged, like he was bored. His sense of humor was twisted.

Yuuto averted his gaze and mumbled as he spoke.

“But at the matchmaking session… You know, there’s the point where they say, ‘Why don’t we leave the young people alone to chat?’ We were walking by ourselves in the hotel garden, and… As soon as we were out of the others’ line of sight, she suddenly stretched her arms up really high and said, ‘I actually don’t like tofu salad.’”

“Tofu salad?”

Feeling as though the conversation had taken an abrupt turn, both Takatsuki and Naoya blinked at Yuuto.

Still red in the face, Yuuto continued in a mutter.

“They served tofu salad in the meal at the matchmaking session. When we were eating, she ate every dish like it was delicious and left no food behind.”

But when she was alone with Yuuto in the garden, Mikako had said with a wry smile, “I pretended to enjoy it because it was a matchmaking party. Growing up, I was taught to be good at lying like that when necessary. So I’m sure I could pretend to like you, too.”

Yuuto had been quite taken aback at her unexpected remark.

But Mikako hadn’t been done speaking.

“But I think it would be tiresome to keep lying to my spouse my whole life. I don’t want to pretend to like you. I want to actually like you, if I can. So could we try speaking more candidly? We can start with just the time it takes us to make one lap around the pond in this garden. During that time, if we can find even one thing that we like in each other, then we might be able to live a bit happily together.”

For a while, Yuuto had been speechless, staring at Mikako with a dumbfounded expression.

This was an arranged marriage, where the option to refuse was off the table from the start.

“Hey. Did you hear me?”

Coming back to his senses when Mikako waved a hand in front of his face, Yuuto had opened his mouth in a panic and said—

“…P-plum dressing.”

“Plum dressing?”

“No, I mean, well…I…I don’t like pickled plums. So plum dressing is…”

Immediately afterward, Yuuto had realized he should have said something more tactful.

It wasn’t like they were supposed to be sharing foods they didn’t like with each other, but Yuuto had just sort of gone along with that after Mikako had said she didn’t like tofu salad.

Mikako had stared at him with wide eyes, and Yuuto had shaken his head and both hands back and forth, flustered.

“No, I mean, I meant to say!”

At that, Mikako had doubled over and started laughing.

She ended up laughing until she was in tears, and with no way to explain himself, Yuuto had thought it was all over. He was certain that, rather than liking him, she would think he was stupid.

But as she wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, Mikako had said, “Until a moment ago, I thought you were kind of stiff, serious, and boring, but… You’re actually surprisingly cute.”

“C-cute? Me?! I’m a guy!”

“But your face is bright red… It’s cute,” she had replied, pointing at his face and smiling. Her expression in that moment was bright and somehow so lovely, and that was when Yuuto first thought, Ah. I like her.

Yuuto sighed.

He must have been quite confused by Mikako’s recent behavior. Indeed, even from the story they had just heard alone, Mikako seemed rather different from the person they had met earlier.

“I don’t know why Mikako just remembered the Tengu-sama thing now… But even I can kind of understand why she would think Tengu-sama could help her when something strange is happening.”

Yuuto looked at Takatsuki as he spoke.

“I was brought to those Tengu-sama tea parties a few times as a kid, too. Back then, A— …You seemed godlike in some way even to me when I was a child. No matter what anyone asked of you, you had an answer right away. It felt like there was absolutely nothing you didn’t know.”

“…I was only pretending to be like that,” Takatsuki said with a bitter smile. “I’m not the Tengu’s Child. I don’t have the power to help anyone and everyone. That’s the truth.”

“Yeah, I know… I’m going to tell Mikako that, too.”

“I’d be glad if you did. Oh—hey, Yuuto?”

Suddenly, Takatsuki looked as if he’d just thought of something.

He held his hand out toward Yuuto.

“You’ve been on a few dates with Miss Mikako, right? Show me some pictures of your dates.”

“Wh-why should I have to show you something like that?!”

“As your cousin, I want to see you deepening your relationship with Miss Mikako bit by bit. It’s no big deal, right? So why not?”

Takatsuki smiled widely, snatching Yuuto’s phone from his reluctant grip. “Let’s look at them together,” the professor said, so Naoya peered in from the side.

“Oh, you went to Disneyland. Those Mickey Mouse ears look good on you, Yuuto.”

“W-well! Mikako insisted that I wear them!”

Takatsuki looked quite happy as he swiped from one photo to the next. Kazu came to Naoya’s mind, for some reason, and he wondered if all older cousins were like this. He felt sure that Kazuya would say the same thing as Takatsuki if Naoya ever got a girlfriend.

It was at that moment—

Abruptly, as if startled, Takatsuki turned around.

Curious, Naoya turned his head, too—and his eyes landed on a face he had never wanted to see again.

“Good evening, sir. I take it you’ve been well?”

Straight-backed posture. Jet-black hair that was neatly combed back. A dark suit that seemed to melt into the nighttime darkness. A shallow smile plastered to his face for appearance’s sake only.

It was Takatsuki’s father’s secretary, Kuroki. The man in charge of keeping an eye on Takatsuki.

“What are you here for today?” Takatsuki asked in a low voice, handing Yuuto’s phone back to him.

“Oh, I had some business nearby, so I just came to see how you were. But that aside—”

As he approached them, Kuroki’s gaze turned to Yuuto. His eyes were strangely sharp in his plain, nondescript face.

“My, my. What on earth are you doing here, sir?”

“…”

Yuuto’s expression had gone blatantly stiff.

Kuroki, his superficial smile still in place, went on.

“I hate to find fault with some cousinly bonding, but…I can’t say I think much of what’s happening here. Does your father know about this?”

It was as though he was scolding Yuuto for meeting with Takatsuki.

Yuuto’s voice was a bit shrill. He seemed to dislike Kuroki.

Kuroki nodded slightly, as if to say, “Is that so?”

“Your cousin has already cut all ties to members of the Takatsuki family. There is no need for you to be meeting now. Wouldn’t it be better for you to go home early today? You have an appointment to go golfing with a client tomorrow.”

Indirectly ordered to leave, Yuuto looked between Takatsuki and Kuroki.

Takatsuki smiled at him.

“Good night, Yuuto. I wish you and Mikako happiness.”

“…Right. Thanks for today.”

With that, Yuuto got in his car, as if he couldn’t get away from Kuroki fast enough.

As he watched the car drive off, Takatsuki said to Kuroki, “Mr. Kuroki, if you only came to see how I am, could you leave already? As you can see, I’m the same as ever.”

“What business did you have with Yuuto, sir?”

Kuroki stood next to Takatsuki, also watching Yuuto’s car drive away.

“It’s none of your concern, Mr. Kuroki. I was just consulting with him about something personal. It wasn’t regarding work.”

“Oh? Don’t tell me you see Yuuto often?”

“No. We hadn’t seen each other in about twenty years. You don’t have to worry, I usually have no contact with members of the Takatsuki family.”

“I see, that’s good. I was simply a bit surprised that mediocre clone of his father would have any business with you now.”

Kuroki’s smooth words were laced with venom, and Naoya looked at him in shock.

Takatsuki glared at the man silently.

Kuroki looked utterly unbothered by it.

“…If you have no business with me, please leave. Talking to you makes me feel sick.”

Takatsuki’s voice was plain with disgust.

Naoya didn’t know anyone other than Kuroki to whom Takatsuki behaved like this. It was only natural, he thought. He couldn’t understand Takatsuki’s father. Why would he put a man who was the embodiment of nastiness in charge of keeping tabs on Takatsuki? Every time Kuroki opened his mouth, Naoya couldn’t help but feel as though a dark blade was being swung in Takatsuki’s direction. This man had been like this the first time Naoya met him, and he was certain he had always and would always be this way. He just wanted Kuroki to leave already.

“Ah, that reminds me, there is one thing I needed to speak with you about,” Kuroki said, taking something out of the bag he was carrying.

He handed Takatsuki a plastic document sleeve with what looked like a flyer tucked inside.

“This is an announcement for a photo exhibition. The exhibition will be held in Hatsudai for a week, starting tomorrow.”

Takatsuki’s face stiffened as he took the flyer.

The exhibition seemed to be by a photographer who had followed overseas ballet companies. There was a large photo printed on it of a ballerina in a white outfit and of a magnificent, palace-like building.

Spotting the word “Takatsuki” on the flyer, Naoya gasped.

His eyes strayed to the text printed on the paper. It was information about a talk show.

“To commemorate this photo exhibition, we will be conducting a talk show with legendary prima ballerina, Sayaka Takatsuki.”

“What are you trying to say with this?” Takatsuki asked in a low voice. “I have no interest in ballet.”

“I’m aware,” Kuroki replied. “This is a precautionary notice. Please be sure to stay away from the venue not just on the day of the talk show, but for the duration of the exhibition as well. This is to avoid any unnecessary commotion. You understand, I’m sure?”

“…As if I need to be told.”

Takatsuki gave one small puff of laughter.

There were limits to how much Naoya could endure, and he never wanted to see Takatsuki laughing in that way.

Before he knew it, Naoya had stepped forward to put himself between Takatsuki and Kuroki.

“Um, could you please stop?”

Behind him, he heard Takatsuki call in a startled voice, “Hold on, Fukamachi—!” But Naoya didn’t turn to look at him, instead replying inwardly with, Shut up, don’t say a word. He wanted to reprimand the professor, to tell him that he needed to stop laughing whenever something bad happened, that if he was going to laugh in such a self-abasing way, he might as well cry instead.

Kuroki’s expression said that he was only just noticing Naoya now that he was standing in front of him.

“…Ah. I believe you’re the student who was at his apartment before.”

“Please leave now,” Naoya said, glaring at Kuroki.

Kuroki’s eyes widened in mock surprise.

“I don’t think a student should be interfering with adult matters.”

“What ‘adult matters’?” Naoya growled. “You’re just trying to hurt Professor Takatsuki.”

Kuroki chuckled.

“I’m just trying to be considerate in my own way. I’m worried about your professor.”

Naoya frowned at the distortion mingling in with his words.

He wasn’t being considerate at all. He wasn’t worried a bit about Takatsuki.

“Consideration is what people do when they care about others, even just a little bit… You don’t care one bit about Professor Takatsuki, do you?”

“That’s not true. He is President Takatsuki’s son, after all.”

Kuroki’s eyes narrowed.

“I want him to keep quiet, not get in the way of his father, not cause any trouble, and live his life in such a way that doesn’t involve the company or the Takatsuki family… That’s all I’m asking.”

Such were Kuroki’s true feelings, without a trace of untruth or exaggeration.

Naoya knew it with certainty.

When was the last time he had seriously wanted to punch someone?

Naoya’s body moved before he could think.

It all happened without his being conscious of it—his foot stepped forward, his arm raised, his fist clenched. Naoya hadn’t realized he held such violence inside him. All he wanted was to hit the other man until his face was crushed in.

Kuroki looked shocked. He took a quick step back, and Naoya advanced forward again, aiming for the man’s head.

But then he felt an arm holding him back firmly from behind.

It was Takatsuki.

He had Naoya in a headlock and was not curbing his strength. At that point, between the differences in their physiques and their pure physical power, there was nothing Naoya could do. He tried to shout at Takatsuki, demanding to know what he was doing, but all that came out was a strangled groan. Even so, Naoya thrashed in his grip, refusing to give up.

Still holding Naoya back, Takatsuki addressed Kuroki.

“Good night, Mr. Kuroki. I’d appreciate it if you could stay out of my sight for a while.”

“…Good night, sir. I’m glad you have such an adorable guard dog.”

Still laughing, Kuroki turned on his heel.

Even once he had turned a corner and disappeared from sight, Takatsuki kept holding on to Naoya. Perhaps he thought Naoya would chase after Kuroki and punch him. Struggling in his arms like a child, Naoya cried out.

“…Why?! Why’d you do that?!”

“Why? Because I can’t let you get caught red-handed committing assault.”

“Why didn’t you stop him from talking to you like that?! You haven’t done anything wrong!”

“…Because I don’t personally have anything to back up that assertion,” Takatsuki muttered from behind Naoya’s ear.

The heaviness in his voice made Naoya hold his breath.

“Listen, Fukamachi, I still don’t know the circumstances of my disappearance. Even if someone kidnapped me, that doesn’t rule out my own will or negligence being a factor. Besides, it’s indisputable that I’m the one who broke my mother. I’m the one who destroyed our family.”

Takatsuki kept his hold on Naoya the whole time he spoke.

Was that why he hadn’t said anything back to Kuroki? Was his demeanor, which was so unlike him, the result of his feeling guilty? Had Takatsuki been living his life this entire time feeling that way?

But, but that’s—that’s wrong. Because—

“It wasn’t your fault, Professor!”

“I’m telling you, we don’t know that.”

“You’re wrong…! I’m sure of it! It’s not true!” Naoya shouted, and it was like the rage that had built up in his throat was spewing forth.

Suddenly, Takatsuki’s arms loosened.

Naoya shook Takatsuki off immediately and rounded on him, wanting to smack him across the face instead.

Lips pursed, the corners of his mouth were slightly downturned, as though he was restraining himself from something. His gently narrowed eyes, however, were lit with a warm glow… His smile looked troubled, but he also looked just a little like he was trying to hold back tears.

“…Ugh. Good grief, you’re such a handful.”

Unexpectedly, Takatsuki reached out a hand and put it on Naoya’s head.

And then he started petting Naoya’s hair, aggressively ruffling it in the process.

“H-hey! What are you doing? Seriously, knock it off!”

“Bear with it. I just really feel like doing this right now.”

“You ‘just feel like’ it…?”

With his head being pressed down, Naoya couldn’t see Takatsuki’s face. When he tried to escape, Takatsuki only pressed down harder, obstinately stroking his head. His hand moved just like he was petting a dog.

Come to think of it, Kuroki had called Naoya a guard dog.

Naoya thought Takatsuki was already enough like a dog for the both of them, though.

“…You’ve changed, you know?” he heard Takatsuki say. “Since we came back from Nagano. The fact that I’ve forgotten the events that changed you like that… I really can’t stand it.”

With that, Takatsuki patted Naoya’s head one more time.

The following day, Saturday, Naoya headed to Shinjuku before noon.

He was planning on seeing a movie.

After that, he headed back to ground level, navigating the crowds and passing right by the movie theater. He went up the stairs at the southeast exit and came out onto the road along Kōshū Kaidō.

He was content with buying the books and no longer felt like watching a movie.

That was what Naoya told himself as he kept walking. Intending to go on a light stroll, he made his way along Kōshū Kaidō in the direction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. The curry he had just eaten was sitting heavy in his stomach, so he was in the mood to walk a little. That was all.

After walking twenty minutes from Shinjuku Station, he was in Hatsudai.

Realizing at that point that he had run out of any excuses, Naoya glared ahead at the large, towering building complex. It appeared to be called Tokyo Opera City. Along with restaurants and offices, the building contained cultural facilities such as playhouses and concert halls.

The photo exhibition was being held in a gallery on the third floor.

The talk show Takatsuki’s mother would be on was at two PM that day.

Naoya himself wasn’t sure why he had bothered to come all the way here.

He was aware that he was intruding too much into Takatsuki’s privacy. This wasn’t something he needed to know, and Takatsuki probably wouldn’t be too happy if he found out.

Still, just once, Naoya wanted to see what Takatsuki’s mother looked like.

He had heard stories about her from various people. From what he had gleaned, she was like a tragic heroine, but she also seemed to be a very selfish person. It was said she had once utterly broken down, but now she was appearing on a talk show. As Yuuto had mentioned, she must have recovered.

But when he was actually at the gallery entrance, Naoya felt a powerful urge to turn and run. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this after all, he thought. He was disgusted with himself for being driven by such vulgar curiosity.

There were flowers displayed at the entrance and a small signboard announcing the talk show. Naoya could hear people talking on a microphone from inside the gallery. He checked the clock to see that it was shortly after two o’clock.

The show must have already started. Inside, that very moment, Takatsuki’s mother was speaking. That thought made him lose his nerve even more.

Plus, Naoya wondered what he would do if he ran into Kuroki. He didn’t think the odds were high, but they weren’t nonexistent, either. If he found Naoya hanging around here, he would probably go to Takatsuki’s place and say something nasty to him, right on the heels of the day before.

I can’t, Naoya thought. I’m going home.

Just as he was about to turn and go, someone grabbed him firmly by the shoulder from behind.

Startled, Naoya turned his head.

“—What’s this? What a coincidence! It’s been a while, kiddo.”

A thin man with a stubbly face stood there, his overly familiar words reeking of cigarette smoke. For a moment, Naoya wondered who the hell he was, but then his disheveled hair and shady-looking sunglasses rang a bell.

It was Iinuma. The man introduced himself as a freelance journalist, but he was basically just a reporter who penned trashy articles for gossip mags about celebrity affairs and such. The first time Naoya had met him, in fact, was when Takatsuki had accepted a case from an actress.

“…So you’re still alive?”

“That’s the first thing you say to me? That’s cold! I sure am alive, though I was laid up in the hospital with pneumonia for a while. Speaking of, you guys were a bit heartless, don’t ya think? I got pneumonia because I saved Professor Takatsuki. I’m a lifesaver, so to speak. Normally you’d come visit with a big fruit basket and bow your heads in thanks, y’know? But you guys left me behind and just went back to Tokyo!”

Iinuma was as insincere and chatty as ever. Naoya brushed his hand away.

“You did help the professor, that’s true, but then you almost ended up drowning along with him, and Mr. Sasakura saved you.”

“No, no, I’m pretty sure that prof would have died if I hadn’t jumped in first and grabbed him! But anyway, forget about that. What’s up, kiddo, did you come here to see the photo exhibition?”

Suddenly, Iinuma leaned in close and grinned.

Naoya glared back at him.

“What about you? Are you still investigating the professor?”

The reason Iinuma had originally started skulking around Takatsuki was because Takatsuki’s father had pressured a magazine into suppressing a tabloid photo of Takatsuki together with an actress.

After that, Iinuma had started investigating the professor, hoping to write an article about the truth behind his being spirited away, sniffing around in this and that like he had a grudge. Naoya hadn’t seen the man in a while, so he had figured he’d given up already, but apparently not.

Iinuma shrugged.

“I’m a busy guy, y’know. It’s not like I’m constantly looking into him. But my journalist’s intuition tells me there’s something up with that teacher. I’m not gonna ignore the chance to gather info. If you wanna see the exhibition, kiddo, I’ve got a free ticket. I got it through some connections. I’ll give it to you.”

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that. Let’s get along!”

“W-wait a minute!”

Grabbing Naoya by the shoulders, Iinuma steered them quickly toward the entrance. He waved his ticket at the receptionist, as if flaunting it, and dragged Naoya into the gallery.

The gallery was divided into a maze of photo panels. There weren’t many visitors, perhaps because the talk show had already started. In the big, blown-up photographs, foreign ballet dancers were striking various poses. Their outstretched arms were elegant, their backs gently arched, their legs unbelievably high reaching. As they leaped through the air, their flexing muscles cast sharp shadows in the black-and-white pictures. Naoya didn’t know much about ballet, but it was hard for him to imagine the ballet dancers as being human just as he was. It was like he was looking at much freer, fiercer creatures.

“Now where is this talk show happening? Where is Mama Sayaka?”

Iinuma went deeper and deeper into the exhibition, barely sparing a glance for the photos on display.

Dragged along after him, Naoya stiffened as the voices on the microphones got ever closer.

A calm male voice was coming from the other side of the panels. A soft, clear female voice was answering him.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s been a long time since I danced, but—”

No. I can’t do this. I need to leave now.

But heedless of Naoya’s thoughts, Iinuma held his shoulders even tighter, surging forward.

Eventually, the panels came to an abrupt stop, and the view opened up. They had arrived at the talk show venue.

“—Look, kiddo,” Iinuma whispered in his ear. “That’s your professor’s mom.”

For a moment, Naoya stopped breathing.

One of them was likely the photographer. He was a sturdy man of about fifty, dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans.

And the other was—a very beautiful woman with soft-looking light-brown hair that hung down around her shoulders. Her slender, long-limbed body was clad in an elegant beige dress. Every time the photographer spoke to her, she would put a delicate hand to her mouth and smile softly or answer in a clear voice.

That was Sayaka Takatsuki.

“She seems young… She’s gotta be in her sixties already. What, does she drink the blood of virgins or something?” Iinuma muttered.

Takatsuki’s mother would be around that age, but perhaps because they were looking at her from a distance, she didn’t appear that old at all. Her beautiful features were really very similar to Takatsuki’s. Enough that it was quite clear she was his mother.

“I still can’t forget your performance of Giselle,” Naoya heard the photographer say to Sayaka. “You were so lovely and light that I thought, Wow, she really is a fairy. I thought I’d be able to see Sayaka Takatsuki perform for a long time to come, but you retired so early. To be honest, it was a shock. I heard you had injured your leg, but I was surprised that you completely retired from the ballet world afterward. Didn’t you miss it at all?”

“I got married soon after that,” Sayaka replied with a bashful smile. “It’s not that I didn’t feel any attachment to ballet but that my love for my husband was greater than that… When you’re doing ballet, you know, you end up being away from home a lot. But it was indeed a surprise to me, too, that I would find happiness in becoming a wife and a mother.”

Naoya stared blankly at her smile.

This woman spoke of her family with the same face as Takatsuki.

“But when I held my newborn son in my arms, I realized I would live my life protecting him. At that moment, I knew I would never be Giselle again.”

There was not the slightest distortion in her voice, but hearing it made something in Naoya’s chest creak.

After that, the talk show went on to discuss overseas ballet performances and life in a ballet company, before eventually coming to an end.

As the audience applauded, Sayaka and the photographer stood up, bowed slightly, and headed toward the back to make their exit.

At that moment, Iinuma made his move.

Naoya struggled in his grip, but Iinuma had his arm in one hand and dragged him forward, pushing other audience members aside to chase after Sayaka.

“Mrs. Sayaka Takatsuki! Hello! I was so moved by the talk show just now!”

Sayaka, who was about to leave, turned around in surprise when she heard her name called loudly. In his brightly patterned shirt and sunglasses, Iinuma stood out clearly among the gallery guests. A woman who seemed to be an attendant spoke to him with a blatant frown on her face.

“Pardon me, you can’t do that. Please step back.”

“I mean, especially the part about retiring from ballet and realizing the love you had for your family? That was great! I was so touched that I cried!”

Ignoring the attendant trying to keep him away, Iinuma moved even closer to Sayaka, who looked at him with wide eyes. Then, however, she smiled politely.

“Thank you very much. But I am a little sorry for talking so much about my family. I’m sure everyone wanted to hear more about ballet.”

“No, no, no, that kind of stuff is just what I wanted to hear! It really struck a chord! So—Sayaka, do you still have a close relationship with your son?”

Iinuma shook him off, annoyed, and asked yet another question.

“Your son, how is he doing?”

The soft smile Sayaka had been wearing suddenly faded. A shadow fell over her dark-brown eyes.

With a sad smile, she said, “Well—my son disappeared when he was a child.”

Naoya’s eyes widened, and he stared at Sayaka, who continued.

“The truth is, we still haven’t found my son… I still believe that he will come back someday.”

At that moment, something inside Naoya once again creaked jarringly.

The female attendant urged Sayaka farther back. Sayaka gave a slight bow to Iinuma, then looked at Naoya’s face with a somewhat curious look in her eyes before taking her leave.

Iinuma saw her off, ripped his sunglasses from his face, and clicked his tongue.

“…The hell? She wouldn’t be joking about that, right?”

Turning to look at Naoya, he nudged him roughly with an elbow.

“And what’s with that look on your face, kid? You know something, don’t you? Come on, tell me. I’d like to hear it.”

Naoya looked down without saying a word and shook his head. He simply started heading for the exit. Iinuma followed, but every time he tried to grab Naoya by the arm or shoulder, he shook him off, hurrying out of the gallery.

Sayaka had seemed normal.

There hadn’t been anything strange about her.

And yet, even now, she was living in a fantasy world.

In that world, her son had been kidnapped at the age of twelve and had never returned. The more she turned her eyes away from reality, the more cruelly the world around her distorted.

Takatsuki, living in the real world, still didn’t exist to her.

Late Monday afternoon, as Naoya was headed to the professor’s office to return a book he had borrowed, he ran into Takatsuki just as the other man was about to head out somewhere and heard about the situation.

“It seems he can’t get in touch with Miss Mikako at all.”

Yuuto had called Mikako on Saturday night, but she hadn’t answered. He’d left a message on her answering machine but never heard back.

He had called again on Sunday afternoon, but Mikako still didn’t answer. That evening, he’d gone straight to her apartment, but there was no response when he rang the intercom, and when he checked from the outside, there were no lights on in her apartment.

At that point, Yuuto had tried casually checking in with her family, thinking she might have gone home, but Mikako hadn’t been there.

Monday morning, as a last resort, Yuuto had tried calling the English conversation school he knew Mikako attended. Nearly mistaken for a stalker, all Yuuto had managed to get out of the school was that Mikako had an unexcused absence that day.

And so, at his wit’s end, Yuuto had contacted Takatsuki.

Takatsuki had briefly returned to his office to explain everything to Naoya. As he was about to leave again, he said, “I don’t have any more lectures today, so I thought I’d go look for her, too. Ah, you don’t have to come, of course, Fukamachi. This has nothing to do with the investigation at this point—Fukamachi?”

Takatsuki had turned to stare at Naoya, who had instinctively grabbed him by the arm to stop him.

Naoya stared up at him.

“I don’t think you should get involved in anything concerning Miss Mikako anymore, Professor.”

“…I’m afraid that’s not an option.”

“I remember. But it’ll be too late by the time something happens, and it’s possible that something is already happening,” Takatsuki replied, his face serious. “Or rather, by the time this issue came to me, it may already have been well past its starting point.”

“Huh?”

“I should have pointed it out to Yuuto sooner,” he muttered, stroking his chin lightly.

Just as Naoya was about to ask what he meant, there was a knock on the office door.

Takatsuki, who usually responded right away, for some reason immediately stopped talking and stared at the door. The person on the other side knocked again.

“…Come in,” Takatsuki called out, and the office door opened from the outside.

Standing there—was Mikako.

She was wearing a wine-red dress and carrying a shoulder bag. Her heavy black hair framed her face, and her large almond-shaped eyes glittered with heat. Almost instinctively afraid of her face, Naoya grabbed on to Takatsuki’s arm again. For some reason, he felt he had to keep the professor away from her.

But Takatsuki plucked Naoya’s hand off his arm and took a step forward.

“Ah, it’s a good thing I didn’t leave… Well, I had a feeling you might come to see me, somehow.”

“Tengu-sama,” Mikako said.

Her voice was like a sweet poison.

“I’ve always adored you, Tengu-sama. Ever since we met as children. You’re the only one who understands me.”

Her gaze full of fixation, Mikako threw herself at Takatsuki. So thin that it was evident even through her clothes, her arms twined around his back, snakelike.

He spoke in a quiet voice, looking into space rather than at the woman clinging to his body.

“Indeed. I did meet you a long time ago. At a tea party my mother held in our garden.”

The look in Takatsuki’s eyes as he stared into the distance was the one he wore when he was replaying memories of the past.

The scenery he was gazing at now was that of a tea party held in the garden of his home more than twenty years before.

“Tea, sandwiches, and sweets were laid out on a large white table. The adults were chatting happily, but you were sitting quietly, looking bored and eating snacks. Eventually, you got up from your chair and walked by yourself to a flower bed in the garden. I had more or less finished listening to all of the ladies’ concerns, so I followed you.”

“That’s right, Tengu-sama! So you remembered me after all!”

Mikako hugged Takatsuki tighter and tighter, sounding pleased.

“Yes. I remember you. But I don’t know your name.”

Finally, Takatsuki moved.

He unwound her arms from his body and grabbed them with both of his hands instead. Returning his vision from scenes of the past to the present happening right before his eyes, Takatsuki peered down at Mikako’s face.

“You’re not Miss Mikako, are you?”

Naoya was confused by his words.

Mikako didn’t reply. She simply looked up at Takatsuki, her eyes brimming with even more passion than before.

Takatsuki continued.

“Miss Mikako came to my mother’s tea parties several times. She was always holding a teddy bear in her arms. She was always doted on by the surrounding adults. That day—you didn’t have a teddy bear, but all the adults thought you were Miss Mikako. And you didn’t deny it. I thought that was strange. After all, you weren’t the same girl. That’s why I followed you to the flower beds and asked you who you were.”

Tears had welled up in Mikako’s burning gaze and began to spill over.

Naoya looked at her and then at Takatsuki.

“Professor, then… This person is Miss Mikako’s…?”

“That’s right, Fukamachi,” Takatsuki said. “She’s Miss Mikako’s twin sister. I’m not sure which is the elder sister, though. I never got to ask her name back then. A bird flew out from under the shade of a tree in the garden, unluckily, and I collapsed.”

That was how she had known about his fear of birds.

This woman, with a face identical to Mikako’s, gazed up at Takatsuki with tears streaming down her face.

“My name is Yuriko… I’m Mikako’s younger sister.”

Naoya recalled Yuuto saying that Mikako’s younger sister was studying abroad.

But that didn’t make sense. Why didn’t Yuuto recognize Yuriko?

“I’m…defective. That’s why I’ve been hidden away so people won’t have to see me.”

Yuriko continued to cry.

“Is that because of what’s on your shoulder?” Takatsuki asked.

“At first…probably. But I don’t think it was only that.”

Mikako and Yuriko were identical twins.

Everything about them should have been the same. Their faces, their voices, everything, like they were reflections of each other.

But there was a single difference between them.

Yuriko was born with an unsightly growth on her shoulder.

The doctor explained it was an abnormality that occurred in the womb. For some reason or another, the amniotic membrane must have torn off and adhered to that spot. It could have resulted in a much more serious impairment, so they were lucky it only ended up being as bad as it was.

Naturally, her parents sought treatment. They consulted the doctor about whether something like surgery could be done for it.

“It didn’t really bother me much when I was little. But when I got a little older, when I was with other children in kindergarten… All of the other kids pointed at my shoulder and said it was gross. Mikako protected me and yelled at them on my behalf, but I sobbed and blamed her. I asked why she wasn’t the same as me, when we were twins, why she had such beautiful shoulders… Mikako tried comforting me with an awkward look on her face, but that’s when I realized. We’re twins who look exactly alike, like looking in a mirror, except I’m the one who’s the reflection. Mikako is the real one, and I’m her mirror image. On top of that, the mirror is distorted.”

That idea took root deep, deep within Yuriko.

Eventually, she began to shut herself away in her room. She said she didn’t want to go to kindergarten, and when she was forced to go anyway, she would curl up in a corner by herself. She started to dislike talking to people and stayed perpetually silent, with a gloomy expression.

After all, Mikako was the real article.

As long as Mikako was around, there was no need for Yuriko.

In contrast to her sister, Mikako grew up to have a bright and carefree personality. At a loss for how to deal with Yuriko, their parents began to dote entirely on Mikako. Mikako alone continued to pay attention to Yuriko; everyone else left her almost entirely alone.

It’s said that twins are the same at the genetic level.

But ultimately, a person’s circumstances were what made them who they were.

Although their faces remained identical, everything else about the girls had inexorably diverged.

Before Yuriko had gone, her sister had told her she had to act like her or it wouldn’t work.

In front of the dresser in her childhood room, Mikako had helped Yuriko get dressed, combed her hair and put a ribbon in it, and pointed to the mirror, saying, “Look.”

“We’re so alike,” she had said. “Now, smile. If you do, no one will notice.”

Those words were like magic.

Reflected together in the mirror, Mikako and Yuriko had indeed switched places.

Wearing a smile like Mikako always did, Yuriko had left the room, and when she tried hugging her mother, her mother was readily convinced that she was Mikako.

The spell Mikako had cast was perfect. At the tea party, everyone thought Yuriko was Mikako and doted on her.

But before long, she grew bored listening to the adults’ chatter. She’d eaten too many sweets, and her stomach was full.

So Yuriko had gotten up from the table by herself. Drawn to a butterfly flapping around the garden, she had walked toward the flower beds.

It was there that Tengu-sama had asked her, “Who are you?” It had shocked her.

Mikako’s spell was perfect, after all.

“It was only you. Only you could tell who I was. You didn’t see Mikako; you saw me. Ah…do you understand? How happy I was at that moment? Only Tengu-sama looked straight at me, the fake reflected in the distorted mirror, the unnecessary one! That was the moment I realized that Tengu-sama’s clairvoyance was real!”

“You’re wrong, Miss Yuriko. I’m not at all clairvoyant.”

“All I did back then was pay attention. Your faces were the same, but your typical mannerisms were different from Miss Mikako’s. Miss Mikako was the type to never put down her teddy bear, but you didn’t have one. Also, Miss Mikako had a habit of picking up the crumbs that had fallen onto the tablecloth one by one and arranging them in a row. You didn’t do that… All I was doing was watching.”

“There, so you were looking at me after all!”

Yuriko laughed with delight, utterly missing the point with her response.

“I wanted to go to another tea party in Mikako’s place, but soon after that, I heard that Tengu-sama’s tea parties were canceled because Auntie Takatsuki had fallen ill. It was such a shame.”

That was most likely because Takatsuki had quit being the Tengu’s Child.

The tea parties for Tengu-sama were never held again.

Yuriko grew up without ever meeting Tengu-sama a second time. The growth on her shoulder changed shape little by little as her body grew. It stretched out, beginning to resemble a human face in a way, and even Yuriko found it creepy.

Her dislike of being around others and her preference for being alone only grew as she went through elementary, middle, and high school. Mikako, on the other hand, made a lot of friends and became a cheerful, sociable person.

As before, Yuriko was only a distorted shadow reflected in a mirror.

And then as an adult, an incident occurred that made Yuriko realize that fact all the more clearly.

When Mikako returned from studying abroad, their parents suddenly told Yuriko to study abroad as well.

It soon became clear why that was.

An arranged marriage proposal had been made for Mikako.

Yuriko had the same face as Mikako, and they were the same age. It shouldn’t have been a problem. But their parents hid Yuriko. They sent her overseas, as if they had no such daughter.

Solely because Yuriko was defective.

“I kept in contact with Mikako even after I went abroad. She told me about the arranged meeting, and when I heard the other party’s surname was Takatsuki, I couldn’t contain myself. I knew he wasn’t Tengu-sama, but still, my heart fluttered… I came back to Japan without telling a soul and met with Mikako.”

Mikako worried over Yuriko, who had become thin from the stress of studying abroad.

Yuriko heard from Mikako all about her fiancé. What kind of person he was, what they called each other, where they went on dates, what they talked about. She listened to it all in detail.

“That was to take Miss Mikako’s place, I assume?” Takatsuki asked.

Yuriko merely nodded.

“As we were talking, I saw us reflected in the mirror in the room. I had lost a little weight, but our faces were still the same. The magic could still work, I thought… It fooled Yuuto. That man must not love Mikako all that much after all.”

Yuriko snickered. The diamond engagement ring that Yuuto had given Mikako shone on her left hand.

As he looked at the ring, a chill ran down Naoya’s spine.

If Yuriko had swapped places with Mikako—then where was Mikako now?

Yuriko looked down at her own shoulder happily, noting cheerfully that even such things could happen.

Naoya, however, had stopped really listening to her talk about halfway through the story.

A broken wineglass. Yuriko had fallen on top of one. It seemed as though there had been a struggle between her and Mikako, and Naoya could not help but imagine the worst.

Was it possible that Mikako was no longer in this world?

Could Yuriko have killed her and taken the engagement ring from her finger?

Holding on to Yuriko’s arms as if he was arresting her, Takatsuki stared down at her with a rigid expression. Unheeding of that, Yuriko went on talking proudly.

“I begged him while crying, and Yuuto really did get in touch with Tengu-sama for me. And then he brought you to me. At first, you couldn’t quite tell me apart from Mikako, and I was a little shocked… But you are Tengu-sama, all the same. In the end, you realized that I wasn’t Mikako!”

The feverish gaze Yuriko looked up at Takatsuki with made Naoya utterly horrified.

Yuriko had only met Takatsuki one time, when she was very young, no less. Had she really been thinking about him ever since?

Was that why, more than twenty years later, she had come all the way here in pursuit of Takatsuki?

Had she even gone as far as to sacrifice her own twin sister?

But even without that reasoning, this bizarre preoccupation, with no thought for the consequences, could only be frightening. A woman pursuing someone with dreadful dedication was, in and of itself, terrifying.

Then—

Takatsuki let out a single sigh.

“Ah…I see. So that’s how it is.”

Yuriko blinked in confusion.

Takatsuki, looking as though he had finally understood, stared down at her.

“This entire time, I didn’t understand. Why had you changed places with Miss Mikako?”

Gently, Takatsuki released Yuriko’s arms, which he had been holding on to all the while.

Instead, he took Yuriko’s left hand and raised it.

A diamond ring sparkled on her ring finger. Looking closely, it was evident to him that the ring was the wrong size. Mikako’s ring was slightly loose on Yuriko’s thin finger.

“Even if you became Miss Mikako, the one you’d marry would be Yuuto, not me. Besides, if you just wanted to use Yuuto to get to me, there was no need for you to impersonate Miss Mikako. You could simply have gotten Miss Mikako to ask Yuuto for you. So why did you deliberately appear before me as Miss Mikako?”

Takatsuki looked down sadly at the ring.

“You just wanted me to tell you apart again—didn’t you? To tell the difference between you and Miss Mikako?”

In that moment, looking up at Takatsuki, Yuriko’s face crumpled.

In a heartbeat, her face had contorted like a child’s on the brink of tears. A long, lingering cry escaped from between her slightly parted lips.

“…B-because…”

“Because…not even…my parents…noticed. Only you…noticed… Tengu-sama.”

—That day, at the tea party at the Takatsuki household.

Everyone had thought Yuriko was Mikako.

And Yuriko had tried her hardest to imitate her sister. She acted more cheerful than usual and smiled adorably at those around her.

And yet it was Takatsuki alone who had realized that it wasn’t Mikako who was there, but Yuriko.

“I felt like…the world changed…at that moment… It was like a miracle.”

Only Takatsuki had seen Yuriko, who was practically invisible.

That miraculous moment was burned into her mind. She had lived her life holding that single moment inside her heart.

Yuriko embraced Takatsuki again. Wrapping her thin arms around him, she cried out in a pleading tone.

“Tengu-sama. Please, look at me and only at me. Please grant my wish! Let’s have another tea party with Auntie Takatsuki! And let’s repeat that moment and live in it happily! Forever and ever and always!”

Once again, Takatsuki did not return Yuriko’s hug.

He merely unwound her arms slowly, put his hands on her shoulders, and spoke.

“Ah, there was something else I didn’t understand, but just now I’ve figured it out… I can’t comprehend it, though.”

“Tengu-sama…?”

Yuriko looked up at him.

Meeting her gaze, Takatsuki continued.

“I’ve wondered this entire time what you were planning to do after I recognized that you weren’t Miss Mikako… You thought that if you met with me, I’d find you, like a prince in a fairy tale, and fall in love with you at first sight, didn’t you? But that’s no more than a fantasy that suits only you.”

Yuriko began to speak, but Takatsuki cut her off with a shake of his head and said firmly, “I can’t be with someone who calls me Tengu-sama.”

Placing a hand on one of Yuriko’s cheeks, Takatsuki peered closely into her eyes.

The gesture looked just as if he was about to kiss her, but it wasn’t going to happen the way Yuriko wished. Reality wouldn’t end with “the prince kissed the princess, and they lived happily ever after.”

“I decided a long time ago to exist as a human. Not as a tengu. I wanted to be with people who allowed me to be human. So I cannot be with you. I’m truly sorry, but I’m not the person you’re looking for, and you’re not the one I want, either.”

Still gazing into her eyes, Takatsuki spoke as if trying to reason with her.

Yuriko had been looking up at Takatsuki blankly, as if not understanding what he was saying. Then, all at once, comprehension dawned in her gaze.

In that moment, her face froze.

“…”

With a smack, Yuriko batted Takatsuki’s hand away.

Staggering backward, she reached into her shoulder bag.

The thing she took out of it was—a paring knife.

“Miss Yuriko.”

Takatsuki pushed Naoya farther back into the room, reaching out toward a nearby bookshelf.

Yuriko, her expression unmoving, pointed the knife at Takatsuki.

“Tengu-sama.”

She called out to him, the tip of the knife trembling.

“Tengu-sama… That was a lie, wasn’t it? Tengu-sama wouldn’t say such a thing.”

“Miss Yuriko. I am not Tengu-sama.”

“Tengu-sama grants everyone’s wishes, and—”

“—he loves…me…”

The tears running down Yuriko’s cheeks fell to the floor.

Suddenly, Yuriko bit her lip.

She thrust the knife at Takatsuki while, almost simultaneously, Takatsuki held up in front of himself a file that he had grabbed from the bookshelf.

The blade slid along the surface of the file, and a surprised Yuriko tried to draw her hand back.

Before she could, however, Takatsuki had grabbed ahold of her wrist and twisted. With a cry, Yuriko dropped the knife.

With her arm still twisted in his grip, Takatsuki asked, “Miss Yuriko, where is Miss Mikako?”

“I don’t…know…”

Her voice was distorted.

“Is Miss Mikako safe?”

“I don’t know… No, she’s not alive anymore. I killed her!”

Yuriko’s voice creaked and warped violently.

Takatsuki glanced at Naoya, who was covering his ears, and let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness…Miss Mikako is okay.”

Yuriko looked up at him, her face blotchy from crying.

Lowering her twisted arm, Takatsuki helped her gently into a chair.

Perhaps no longer possessing the energy to fight, Yuriko covered her face with both hands and began to sob quietly.

Noticing blood flowing from Takatsuki’s fingers, Naoya startled.

“Professor, you—”

“Hmm…? Oh, I miscalculated a little just now, with the file.”

He licked lightly at the cuts running diagonally across his index and middle fingers. That didn’t stop the bleeding, of course, so Takatsuki took out a handkerchief and applied pressure to the wounds.

He then stooped down slightly to be at eye level with Yuriko, who was hunched over in her chair.

Still covering her face, Yuriko shook her head.

“I told you. Mikako is already dead. I killed her.”

“That’s a lie. I may not have clairvoyance, but I know that you didn’t kill Miss Mikako and that you actually know where she is.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, that’s… How, indeed?”

Chuckling, Takatsuki looked at Naoya.

Feeling as though he was being used for his ability, Naoya dropped his hands from his ears.

Although as far as he was concerned, Takatsuki could use him for his ability all he wanted. That’s what Naoya was here for, after all.

“I’m no tengu, so all I can do is speculate, but I think the fact that you didn’t kill Miss Mikako is worth noting. I expect you could have killed her if you had wanted to, because I imagine that when the two of you met up, you were alone. But you didn’t do it… Isn’t that because Miss Mikako is someone you wouldn’t be able to kill even if you wanted to?”

From behind the hands Yuriko was using to shield her face, they could hear her sniffling.

Takatsuki looked down at the blood from his fingers that was soaking through his handkerchief with an uninterested expression.

“You said I was the only one who looked at you, but that isn’t true. Because you had Miss Mikako. She was the one who helped you get dressed and sent you off to the tea party that you hadn’t been allowed to go to before. She was the one who worried over you when you came back from studying abroad looking thin. Only Miss Mikako—only your twin sister—was always there looking out for you, right? That’s why you couldn’t kill her. You couldn’t swing a knife at her like you did at me… Of course, this is all conjecture on my part. But—well, am I wrong?”

With that, Takatsuki held out his fingers, sans handkerchief, in front of Yuriko.

Blood began flowing from Takatsuki’s deeply cut fingers again the second he stopped applying pressure. Looking at them through the gaps in her own fingers, Yuriko shuddered.

“…Mikako is never going to forgive me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“Well, I wonder about that. Not that I would know.”

Gently, Takatsuki touched Yuriko’s hands.

He lowered them away from her face and tucked her hair, which had stuck to her damp cheeks, behind her ears. Peering into her crying face from up close, he said, “But there is one way to find out. Let’s go get Miss Mikako. Where is she?”

In a small voice, Yuriko replied that she was in the basement of the villa.

Contacted by Takatsuki, Yuuto came to pick Yuriko up before heading straight for the Takamura family villa in Hakone.

A few days later, Yuuto visited Takatsuki’s office. As someone who was more or less involved in the situation, Naoya was also summoned.

Yuuto bowed deeply to them both.

“Thank you… I managed to make it in time.”

According to Yuuto, Mikako had been held captive in the basement of the Takamura family’s vacation villa.

Yuriko, home in Japan for a time from studying abroad, had invited Mikako to the villa, and after they chatted for a while, she had apparently mixed a sleeping pill into Mikako’s wine.

Still, Mikako had been held captive for several days. There was some emergency food and water in the basement, but not much. When Mikako was found, she was quite weak, and Yuuto immediately took her to a hospital. Fortunately, her condition was not life-threatening, so she was recovering well and had been discharged from the hospital the day before.

The Takamura family was shocked and infuriated by Yuriko’s actions, but apparently, they hadn’t taken the matter to the police… They probably felt the incident would disgrace their family. Given that they were in charge of a company, they likely feared causing an uproar.

“…How did I not know that she wasn’t Mikako? Even if we hadn’t seen each other for a month… I was so disappointed in myself.”

Yuuto hung his head as he spoke. In front of him sat the Great Buddha mug, filled with coffee.

Takatsuki grinned.

“Well, this isn’t a mystery novel, so I guess one wouldn’t normally imagine it was her twin. But did Miss Mikako not tell you that she had a twin sister?”

“She told me she had a younger sister. She said I wouldn’t be able to meet her now because she was studying abroad, but I would be in for a shock when we did meet. She sounded kind of proud…”

Mikako might have been planning to surprise Yuuto. She wanted to brag about having a sister who looked just like her.

Yes—from Mikako’s point of view, Yuriko’s existence may have been something to be proud of.

A distorted image reflected in the mirror—perhaps Mikako hadn’t thought of Yuriko that way.

“By the way, A— …Um, when did you notice? That she wasn’t Mikako? You only met Yuriko once, and that was a long time ago, right?”

“Even I couldn’t tell right away, seeing as how they had gone from being kindergartners to adult women. And they are identical twins, after all… But there were still lots of little things that felt off. That she was Miss Yuriko is beside the point; it was just that the impression she gave was too inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent?”

“Yeah… The first thing that seemed wrong was that bear,” Takatsuki said, bringing his mug of cocoa to his mouth. “Do you remember how there was a pretty old teddy bear in her apartment? That was the one Miss Mikako was always holding as a child. It had been mended in several places, like she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away even after it was damaged. I figured she must have treasured it quite a lot. But then that day, she just tossed the teddy bear off the sofa without a second thought.”

Hearing this, Naoya realized something.

That was why Takatsuki had taken the time to pick up the upturned bear from the carpet.

“Also, it raised some flags for me when she said she studied early modern literature. The way she said it made me think she must have majored in it, not just taken some classes as electives. But Miss Mikako is aiming to be an English interpreter, right? I mean, it’s not as though there aren’t people who study Japanese literature and become interpreters, but I imagine studying English literature would be the norm.”

“I’m pretty sure Mikako did graduate from the English lit department… That didn’t catch my attention at all in that moment. I just thought she might have taken some classes in early modern literature while in college, but… Huh. So she said it like that.”

Yuuto frowned, but, well, it wasn’t like most people paid as much attention to the details of what someone was saying as Takatsuki did.

Takatsuki continued, after soothing his discouraged cousin.

“So that’s why you suddenly asked me to show you those pictures… Were their faces really that different?”

“If you were looking at them from the perspective that there were two people with that face. Even twins will have some differences as they grow. Even you, Yuuto, when you saw Miss Yuriko after she had switched places with Miss Mikako, you thought she was someone else. You were able to tell after all.”

Takatsuki put down the mug he was holding, leveling a serious look at Yuuto.

“But really, in regard to this matter, I genuinely regret not pointing it out to you sooner. If I had, Miss Mikako could have been rescued sooner… I’m sorry. That day, Mr. Kuroki showed up, and that exhausted me, and I forgot to tell you.”

“No, it’s fine. Without A— …Without you, Mikako might actually have died.”

Yuuto sipped his coffee.

Curious without knowing exactly why, Naoya turned to Yuuto and said, “Um, may I ask something?”

“What is it?”

Yuuto looked at him with a face that didn’t resemble Takatsuki’s in the slightest.

“…Where is Miss Yuriko now?”

“She’s at the Takamura house… I heard she’s going to be receiving psychiatric treatment. Apparently, she was originally diagnosed with depression from the stress of studying abroad. That’s why she had the sleeping pills, I guess.”

“I see…”

“Still,” Yuuto said. “For some reason, I can’t bring myself to blame Yuriko.”

“What, even though she almost killed your fiancée?”

“I really wish she hadn’t done that, of course, but I spoke to Yuriko in the car on the way to the villa… She said that she wanted to be Mikako. That she’d wanted to be her for a long time, not just for this swap incident.”

“Not the reflection in the mirror, but the real thing?”

“No—I think she just meant that she wanted to be like Mikako. A bright, sociable woman that everyone likes.”

Mikako and Yuriko had grown up with two opposing personalities.

Cheerful, positive Mikako. Obsequious, gloomy Yuriko. The fact that their faces were basically the same must have made Yuriko feel even more inferior.

But looking at what she felt from another perspective—ultimately, it was adoration.

A longing to be like her sister, an admiration for her.

“Even I…can understand that,” Yuuto murmured, dropping his gaze to the Buddha mug.

Takatsuki tilted his head.

“What? You wanted to be someone, too, Yuuto?”

“A— …You.”

His voice still a mutter, Yuuto glared at Takatsuki, who looked bewildered.

“Huh? Hold on. But you hated me? The last time you liked me was probably kindergarten, wasn’t it?!”

Yuuto had gone bright red.

Takatsuki continued to look taken aback.

“Wh—? …What? Are you serious? I had no idea…”

“Of course you didn’t, because I was the one they were saying those things to! And now, even just looking at A—…at your face—makes me depressed!”

“Whaaaat? I’m so sorry, Yuuto…”

“Don’t apologize! It’ll just make me feel worse!”

Yuuto turned his face away, and Takatsuki took a sip of his cocoa, clearly at a loss for what else to do.

Looking back and forth between the two of them, Naoya almost couldn’t help but laugh. Once again, he was struck by how normal they were as cousins. In Naoya’s case, his cousin Masahiko had been an excellent student, and Naoya and Kazuya would often sulk together over being compared to him.

But this meant that the relationship between Takatsuki and Yuuto hadn’t broken down because of the kamikakushi incident.

It was just that their childhood resentments had festered, and as a result of that being a reality as they grew up, they no longer knew how to behave toward each other… Maybe that was exactly why Yuuto was here now, talking to Takatsuki normally.

Takatsuki looked at Yuuto, who was drinking his coffee, with his face still turned in the other direction.

“That reminds me. I wonder when you’ll start calling me ‘Aki’ again?”

Yuuto spat out his coffee.

He sputtered and coughed, taking the tissue that Takatsuki hastily held out to him.

“Hey now. Yuuto, are you okay? You didn’t get it on your suit, did you?”

“I-it’s fine… Wait, no it’s not! As if I could call you that childish nickname now!”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering, too,” Naoya chimed in. Yuuto shot him a sharp glare.

“…It’s not easy to figure out what to call a cousin you haven’t seen in twenty years. You’ll understand someday.”

“Well, I don’t have any cousins I haven’t seen in that long a time period.”

Naoya shook his head, and Yuuto wiped up the coffee that had landed on the table with the tissue while looking cross. The impression Naoya had gotten of Yuuto as an unpleasant person had completely disappeared, and he looked at the older man, thinking that he was a rather interesting guy.

But he could understand why Yuuto would have difficulty calling Takatsuki “Akira.” He probably felt uncomfortable just using his first name like that, so he kept falling back on “you.”

“But you did call me ‘Aki’ once, Yuuto.”

“I did not!”

“You did so, when I was about to collapse… And you helped hold me up, right?”

Takatsuki smiled.

Yuuto turned away again. Apparently, he really wanted to do away with the Aki nickname.

Then glancing at his watch, Yuuto finished his coffee and stood.

“Sorry. I should get going.”

“Okay. Later, Yuuto.”

Takatsuki waved a hand at him.

As Yuuto reached for the office door, he paused before opening it and turned to look back at Takatsuki.

“Hey. I really owe you one… And I’m sorry for getting you involved in everything.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was glad.”

Takatsuki’s smile was full of genuine happiness.

“…Okay. I will.”

His expression somewhat complicated, Yuuto nodded at the smiling Takatsuki.

Watching him, Naoya realized that Takatsuki definitely would not be invited to Yuuto’s and Mikako’s wedding.

“Later.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them said “see you” or “good-bye” to each other.

There was a chance they would meet again.

But that, most likely, would not be supported by the Takatsuki family.

Yuuto left the office. Staring at the door that had just shut with a clack, Naoya felt lonely, for some reason. The man wasn’t even his relative.

But perhaps, just a little bit, he also felt relieved.

He had learned that Takatsuki had a relative other than Wataru who spoke to him normally.

Kuroki had said he wanted Takatsuki to live his life while keeping quiet. It was as if he had said he wanted the professor to erase his own presence.

Takatsuki’s mother had wiped his very existence out of her mind.

But inside Yuuto, Takatsuki was still there. As Aki. Or maybe…as the cousin he was proud of still.

Standing up, Takatsuki grabbed the Buddha mug that Yuuto had been using.

Chuckling, he turned to Naoya.

“Hey, Fukamachi. Did you notice the white stains on the back of Yuuto’s jacket?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, those. On the back of his left shoulder.”

He had noticed it when Yuuto turned his back to them to leave the office. There had been two fairly large white splotches on his jacket.

“They were parakeet droppings, I think?”

“What? You mean…?”

“Yep, that red parakeet.”

He meant the big red parakeet that Yuriko had wielded in Takatsuki’s direction when they went to Mikako’s apartment. Yuuto had said the bird wasn’t Mikako’s, which meant Yuriko must have bought it somewhere.

“Miss Mikako was in the hospital,” Takatsuki said. “And Miss Yuriko’s situation must be tough, so I’ve been wondering what had become of that bird… I’m glad it seems Yuuto is looking after it now. I hope he’s taking good care of it.”

The image of Yuuto being toyed with by the large bird came into Naoya’s head. Given that there was feces on the back of his jacket, he must have let it out of its cage.

“Even though you hate birds, Professor, you were worried about that parakeet?”

“Well, I mean, it’s not the bird’s fault… I wasn’t thinking of taking care of it myself, though.”

Looking toward the door Yuuto had left through, Takatsuki smiled.

“Yuuto was always a kind boy. He’s my cousin—my adorable, hardworking cousin that I’m proud of.”

Nodding, Naoya brought his coffee mug to his mouth.

He wished that Yuuto could have heard what Takatsuki had just said.

The students burst into laughter at Takatsuki’s delivery.

Nanba, sitting next to Naoya, whispered, “Wait, my birthday hasn’t come yet.” When Naoya replied with a quiet, “My condolences,” Nanba glared back at him.

“‘Purple Mirror’ or ‘The Purple Mirror,’ as this urban legend is known, follows a simple basic pattern. If you still remember the phrase ‘purple mirror’ or ‘the purple mirror’ by the time you’re twenty, you die or experience misfortune. Other variations include not being able to get married or seeing ghosts. The February eighth, 1996, issue of the Yomiuri Shimbun covered this story and theorized, based on reader submissions and experiences, that it originated ‘about seventeen years ago.’ If this is to be believed, that means ‘Purple Mirror’ must have been around as early as 1979. As the slit-mouthed woman originated around 1978, this story could be said to be a product of the ghost story boom at that time.”

As usual, Takatsuki looked like he was having fun.

When studying ghost stories and urban legends, considering the demographic of those responsible for sharing the story was of utmost importance.

In the case of “Purple Mirror,” it was mostly women and children. Such stories were often told in schools, particularly in elementary schools.

The first time Naoya had heard it had indeed been when he was in elementary school. He had overheard some girls talking about it during recess. Within two days, the “Purple Mirror” story had swept through the class.

“However, it’s probably fair to assume that these origin stories were created after the fact. That’s why there are so many variations, and moreover why so many of them are of a narrative nature. Originally, I doubt there was any meaning behind the ‘purple mirror’ phrase. It began as a phrase of unknown origin, and the legend’s original form likely started with someone asking another person, ‘Have you heard of purple mirror?’ Naturally, the recipient of the question wouldn’t know the phrase and would probably ask, ‘What do you mean?’ Without answering that question, the first person simply says, ‘If you still remember this phrase by the time you’re twenty, you’ll die!’ The second person feels shocked at suddenly being cursed like that. The more they try to get the phrase out of their heads, the more it sticks, tormenting them for days.”

Takatsuki smiled and gave a light shrug.

It had been the same at Naoya’s elementary school. When the story was popular, everyone tried desperately to forget it. After a few days, when everyone was finally starting to put it out of mind, one of the boys in class purposefully whispered the phrase loud enough for everyone to hear.

The other children shouted at him, asking why he had said it. Some of the girls even started crying. During that time, the curse of “Purple Mirror” was unmistakably real in Naoya’s class.

Takatsuki looked around the classroom.

“We tend to think that words that appear to be meaningful are, in fact, meaningful. Even if a word or phrase has no meaning whatsoever, we look for meaning in it, imagining its context. The ‘Purple Mirror’ ghost story taps into this psychology. Recently, there’s been an urban legend called the ‘Samejima Incident,’ yes? It’s not one where remembering it curses you, but its psychology is similar to that which forms the basis for ‘Purple Mirror,’ since it involves talking about words that seem meaningful as though they have some dreadful context.”

Oh, I get it, Naoya thought as he listened to Takatsuki speak.

The “Samejima Incident” was a sort of meme. It had started with a post on an internet message board titled, “Let’s talk about the legendary ‘Samejima Thread.’” It was now customary to talk about it as though it was some incredibly horrifying incident that was covered up for some reason. People would post things like, “That was a terrible incident,” but no one would explain the circumstances, because in reality, there was no “Samejima Incident.”

Perhaps because it was fun to discuss fictitious events whose circumstances were unclear, as though one knew the details, the phrase “Samejima Incident” continued to pop up here and there online. Both “purple mirror” and “Samejima Incident” were phrases that came across as having meaning, and that attracted people’s interest and stirred up their imaginations. Those musings turned empty words that actually had no substance whatsoever into a ghost story.

Takatsuki went on.

At Naoya’s side, Nanba clutched at his chest, as if in surprise. “When’s your birthday?” Naoya asked, and Nanba replied with, “The day after tomorrow…” Naoya really did feel sorry for him.

Then, at the lectern, Takatsuki broke into a bright smile.

“Incidentally, I first heard this story when I was in elementary school. I’ve remembered it ever since and even reviewed it when I entered university and started studying folklore. Just like those of you who raised your hands earlier, who know the story and have already had their twentieth birthday, I am living proof that the ‘Purple Mirror’ story is no more than a legend.”

Nanba looked relieved. Naoya stared at him, astonished, wondering if he had seriously been worried about it. He had thought Nanba was only pretending.

Takatsuki, who seemed to have been watching Nanba’s face, chuckled.

Takatsuki’s eyes sparkled as he spoke.

Naoya had a feeling everyone else in the classroom was thinking that whether or not ghost stories were that exciting was dependent on the person in question.

After the lecture was over, as Naoya was getting ready to go home, Nanba turned to him.

“Fukamachi, since it’s my birthday two days from now, do you think you could show me your notes from second period? As a birthday present?”

“…Fine,” Naoya said, pulling out second period’s notes from his folder. “You really should show up to that class at some point.”

Stuffing the paper cheerfully into his bag, Nanba replied, “Once you skip once, it becomes a habit, y’know? It’s like my body just won’t do it. Must be because I’m getting old.”

“You’re a few months younger than I am. The professor takes attendance in that class sometimes, so be careful.”

“Yep, got it. Oh—that’s right. Listen, I finally got my license!”

“Huh? Like to drive?”

“Yep. Only for automatic transmission, though.”

Nanba held up two fingers in a V sign.

“Wow, I want to see it. You have it on you, right?”

“No way, the picture is weird. Are you not gonna get your license, Fukamachi? It’s cheaper to get while you’re a student.”

With a sour expression, Naoya tilted his head to the side.

He definitely thought he’d be better off having a license, considering the future, but Naoya was of two minds after seeing the cost. He’d heard many other students say they got their parents to pay for it, but he felt awkward asking for money from his, when he didn’t usually have contact with them.

“I feel like it’s best to get it in your second year. You’ll start having to do a bunch of stuff related to job hunting in your third year, right? You’ll have more mental and emotional bandwidth for it now.”

It was unusual for Nanba to say something that serious.

He’s more concerned with his future than I expected, Naoya thought, slightly adjusting his opinion of his classmate. Although if that’s the case, he should go to his classes, too.

“Have you already decided which industry or company you want to work in, Nanba?”

“Not really yet. What about you, Fukamachi? Are you thinking of doing an internship?”

“…I was thinking, if I’m going to aim for something, it’ll probably be civil service.”

“Oh, solid choice. Why, though?”

“Well…I heard there aren’t as many interviews as there are at other companies.”

Naoya casually put a hand to his ear.

Whenever he heard about the ins and outs of job hunting, it was always the interviews that seemed like his biggest obstacle.

It was common to hear about stressful interviews and such wearing people down mentally, but even before that, in Naoya’s case, there was the chance that he would collapse at the venue if he wasn’t careful. There was no guarantee that the interviewer or any other students participating in a joint interview with him would only tell the truth.

“But you know,” Nanba said. “I can’t even imagine job hunting yet. I mean, I still can’t even picture what I’ll be like after college.”

“Yeah, true.”

No one knew what the future held, it was said.

Even though time continued to flow by and the future became the present in the blink of an eye, Naoya still couldn’t even fully imagine what he would be like in a year.

And that was to say nothing of what he’d be like in ten or twenty years. Despite being so scared as a child when someone told him, “If you still remember this when you’re twenty, you’ll die,” he felt like if someone said to him now, “If you still remember this when you’re forty, you’ll die,” he would reply, “I don’t even know if I’m going to live that long.” The future remained unclear, but Naoya’s sense of acceptance that things were going to happen as they would was stronger. Perhaps because he didn’t have as many expectations for his future self as he had when he was a child.

Then Naoya’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

He took it out and saw a message from Takatsuki.

“Oh, sorry. I have work.”

“Okay. Work hard.”

“Yep. See you.”

Waving to Nanba, Naoya left the classroom.

He couldn’t imagine himself in a year, but one thing did feel certain.

Naoya was sure that somehow or other, he’d end up working for Takatsuki next year, too.

“Welcome, Fukamachi! This request overlaps directly with the content of today’s lecture. Or I should say that I decided on the material for today’s lecture because of this request.”

“What? You mean the ‘Samejima Incident’?”

“No, no, the ‘Purple Mirror.’”

As he usually did, Takatsuki stood up and started making drinks.

Naoya took a seat in a folding chair and scanned over the e-mail that was on the laptop screen.

It appeared that, once again, the request had come in through the contact form on Neighborhood Stories.

What on earth would it mean to have a Purple Mirror in one’s house?

According to the lecture he’d just sat through, the phrase “purple mirror” wasn’t supposed to mean anything.

“It’s an interesting e-mail, isn’t it?” Takatsuki said, placing a cup of coffee in front of Naoya. “In the typical ‘Purple Mirror’ urban legend, an actual mirror never makes an appearance. It exists only as words, so there’s never any need to identify a real mirror as ‘the Purple Mirror.’ And yet there’s a mirror in her house called the Purple Mirror. It’s quite intriguing!”

“I mean, she wrote that her mother disappeared… What’s that about?”

“The most common version of ‘Purple Mirror’ is the ‘you’ll die if you remember’ one, but there is a variation where you disappear. Example one from today’s lecture materials is one such story.”

Naoya took the materials from the lecture out of his bag. He’d only given them a once-over in class, since Takatsuki had told them to read the stories later.

Example one said:

“In the postwar period, a woman who was about to turn twenty died before her much anticipated coming-of-age ceremony. The woman had habitually used a purple mirror that she loved, but for some reason, after her death, the mirror was never found.

On the day the woman would have turned twenty, an acquaintance of the woman’s went missing, and a purple mirror was left sitting alone on the floor of the acquaintance’s room.

It is said that if you still remember the words ‘the purple mirror’ by the time you’re twenty, the woman who owned the mirror will be summoned to you, and you will be taken into her world inside the mirror, like her acquaintance was.”

What would happen to someone if they remembered the phrase “purple mirror” was a part of the story that the narrator could change as they pleased. All that mattered was that it was some kind of misfortune. In the case of this example, the idea of being “taken to a world inside the mirror” was probably inspired by the phrase “the purple mirror” and contrived as its origin story. Since the most common version involved death, this disappearing variation was a minority pattern.

The sender of the e-mail, however, had written that her mother had disappeared because of the Purple Mirror.

“The part about being taken to a world inside the mirror was probably an image evoked by the ‘mirror’ part of the key phrase. Originally, it was believed that mirrors reflected other realms, things that weren’t of this world.”

Takatsuki took a sip from his mug of marshmallow cocoa.

“There are all sorts of ‘other realms’ reflected in mirrors. In the Sarashina Diary, written in the Heian period, for example, there’s a story in which a mother worried about her daughter’s future has a small mirror made. Receiving a divine message, the mother looked into the mirror and saw the death of her daughter’s husband. The future, in other words. Stories about mirrors showing the future are common in modern urban legends. There’s ‘if you look into a mirror at midnight, you’ll see your own face as you die’ and ‘if you peer into a basin of water in the middle of the night while holding a razor blade in your mouth, you will see the face of your future spouse.’ The mirror is made of water in the case of the second one, but there are a lot of stories where mirrors show the future. The future is a type of ‘other realm’ in the sense that it’s not a reality happening in front of your eyes in that moment.”

“There’s a mirror that reflects the past, too, isn’t there? That one that the King of Hell holds that shows the dead the deeds they committed when they were alive… What’s it called again?”

Takatsuki chuckled softly.

His eyes seemed to carry the slightest tinge of blue, and Naoya tensed a little.

When Takatsuki blinked, though, his eyes returned to their usual dark brown. With a friendly smile that brought a golden retriever to mind, he spoke in an excited tone.

“If it’s okay with you, Fukamachi, let’s go together to hear this girl’s story. And then we can see the Purple Mirror that’s in her house. I mean, opportunities like this don’t come often, do they? A real Purple Mirror! It’s even more exciting than seeing a mummified kappa!”

They arranged to meet with the client that Saturday.

It was decided that they would talk before heading to the inn, and a coffee shop in front of Asakusa Station was chosen as the rendezvous point. Since the area was a tourist destination, the inside of the shop was crowded. Even so, as soon as Takatsuki and Naoya set foot inside, someone waved at them from a table in the back.

They ordered their drinks at the counter. As they approached the table, the client shot to her feet. She had pin-straight hair that was cut at a diagonal over her shoulders, and she wore an oversized shirt and faded jeans on her small frame.

“Um, so you’re Professor Akira Takatsuki, right?”

“Yes, I’m Takatsuki from Seiwa University. This is my assistant, Fukamachi. And you must be the one who e-mailed me, Miss Shiho Matsui?”

“That’s right. Thank you for meeting me today!”

Then, as if concerned about the shop’s raucous atmosphere, she glanced around and gave a knowing smile.

“…I’m sorry for asking you to meet at a coffee shop chain, when you took the trouble of coming to Asakusa. There are some nice cafés around, but they always have long lines to get in, and… A lot of the owners are acquainted with my father. If it got around that I was consulting with a strange man about something weird, I’d be in a little bit of a bind.”

As the daughter of a well-established innkeeper, Shiho had no choice but to worry about what others thought. And it was true that in the shop they were in, none of the staff would overhear their conversation, so they could talk freely.

“I don’t mind. I only came here today to talk to you. I can come back another day to enjoy the lovely shops of Asakusa. Ah, but if there are any you recommend, please tell me about them later.”

Takatsuki smiled.

Shiho’s shoulders relaxed, as though that smile had calmed her. She must have been a bit nervous after all.

“Now then, why don’t you tell me your story?” Takatsuki prompted, and Shiho nodded once before speaking.

“Um, so there’s that mirror in my house. But before that, can I tell you about the household rules?”

“Hmm? Of course. What are they?”

“Well… There’s been a sort of weird rule in my family for a long time. It’s that no one may enter the back storeroom except the head of the household.”

“The back storeroom?”

“If you’re not allowed to enter that room, does that mean you haven’t seen the mirror?”

“Oh, no, sometimes we leave the door to the room open to air it out and let out moisture, so I’ve seen it from outside of the room.”

“So you have seen it! What kind of mirror is it?”

Takatsuki leaned forward suddenly. Surprised, Shiho reared back a little.

“Um, it’s an old Japanese-style full-length mirror, covered in a purple cloth.”

“Full-length? Not a hand mirror?”

“Right. It’s a rectangular mirror big enough to see your whole body in. And, um, it’s just a mirror; it doesn’t have drawers or anything like a dresser. There’s a wooden base underneath.”

“Huh…I see.”

Takatsuki stroked lightly at his chin as he listened to Shiho talk.

“What is it, Professor?” Naoya asked.

“Ah, well… A full-length mirror is a bit of a surprise,” Takatsuki said. “Generally, the mirrors that come up in ‘Purple Mirror’ stories are hand mirrors. In stories that talk about the origin of the phrase ‘purple mirror,’ it’s common for them to tell of the death of a woman or girl who cherished a mirror, and they almost all explicitly describe the mirror as a hand mirror. Even in versions that don’t use that term and simply refer to it as a mirror, there are descriptions of the mirror being carried close to the owner at all times or of it being put away inside a bureau. In which case, it would definitely be a hand mirror or at least a small one. Of course, such stories were probably thought up after the fact, based on the phrase ‘purple mirror,’ so they don’t really mean much… But still, the mirror in your house, Miss Matsui, doesn’t seem to fit into the typical ‘Purple Mirror’ story.”

“Apologies, I’ve derailed the conversation. The mirror in your house—is it usually referred to as the Purple Mirror?”

“Ah, no. It’s usually just called ‘the mirror.’ It’s supposed to be a family heirloom, but it hardly ever gets mentioned in the first place. It’s basically always just, ‘Don’t go into the back storeroom.’”

“Then why is it that you think it’s a Purple Mirror?”

“…Because my mother said it was.”

For a moment, after saying those words, Shiho fell silent.

She bit her lip hard, then started to speak once more.

“When I was little, my mother pointed to the storeroom door and said, ‘Don’t play in that room.’ When I asked her why, she told me, ‘Because there’s a Purple Mirror in there.’ Then she giggled and said, ‘If you still remember the phrase “purple mirror” by the time you’re twenty, you’ll die, so be careful.’ I remember getting freaked out and scared and starting to cry.”

That was a standard telling of the “Purple Mirror” story. Just a pronouncement that the listener would die if they still remembered those words when they were twenty.

Lowering her gaze a little, Shiho continued.

“…My mother disappeared when I was seven years old.”

Shiho said that when she came home from elementary school that day, she noticed that her mother was nowhere to be found.

Setting down her schoolbag, she had walked around the house, looking for her mother.

Half of the first floor of Shiho’s house was used as the living quarters for her family and the inn employees. In the middle of those living quarters was a courtyard, and the storeroom in question faced the courtyard.

After peeking into the kitchen and the living room, she came finally to the courtyard. It was there that, without a doubt, she saw her mother going into the storeroom on the other side.

But it wasn’t as if she could go and peek in. After all, she wasn’t supposed to go in there, either.

And so Shiho had decided to play in the courtyard while she waited for her mother.

But a long time passed, and her mother still had not come out.

“Eventually, my father came home and asked where my mother was. I pointed to the storeroom and said she was in there… His expression changed immediately.”

Her father had walked with long strides down the corridor, stopping at the door to the storeroom.

From the courtyard, Shiho had watched.

Her father slid the door open—but her mother wasn’t inside.

Instead, she saw a mirror.

“It was usually covered with a cloth, but that day, it wasn’t… It looked like it was glowing red, maybe because the setting sun was hitting it just right, and it kind of scared me… I called out to my father. ‘Where’s Mom?’ I asked. And then…”

Shiho’s father had turned and stepped down into the courtyard without stopping to put shoes on and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Forget about this,” he said.

Shiho looked toward the storeroom once more.

No matter how many times she looked inside, her mother was nowhere to be seen.

It was so strange.

She had definitely seen her mother enter that room. And she had waited the whole time for her mother to come out, while playing in the courtyard.

The storeroom door had remained closed until her father had opened it.

And there was no other entrance or exit to that room.

Despite all that, Shiho’s mother had vanished from the storeroom like a puff of smoke.

Her mother shouldn’t have gone into that room after all. Because there was a Purple Mirror in there.

“That mirror made my mother disappear. It must be a cursed Purple Mirror after all, and if I don’t forget about those words and what I saw by the time I’m twenty, I’ll disappear like she did… I think that’s why my father told me to forget about it back then. I’m scared.”

As if overcome by a sudden chill, Shiho wrapped her arms around herself. She hung her head, her small shoulders trembling.

It was then that Takatsuki spoke.

“Miss Matsui.”

Takatsuki’s soft, clear voice came out just as there was a lull in the hustle and bustle of the coffee shop, and Shiho raised her head, as though drawn to the lovely sound.

…Uh-oh, Naoya thought.

Takatsuki held his right hand out to Shiho like he was asking for a handshake. An intelligent-looking smile formed on his handsome face.

Though she looked confused, Shiho extended her right hand as well.

Leaning over the table, Takatsuki took her hand in both of his and began to talk in a tone that sounded just like he was about to confess his love for her.

“This is really wonderf— Augh!”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

Just as Takatsuki had started to say something, Naoya put his palm in the center of the professor’s face and pushed him back forcefully. Hovering half off his seat, Takatsuki’s butt landed back in the chair with a thud. He turned to look at Naoya with teary eyes, rubbing at his nose. Noses were sensitive spots. Getting struck there unexpectedly hurt quite a bit.

“F-Fukamachi! What on earth are you doing?!”

It would be bad news for Shiho if rumors spread about the daughter of a well-known local innkeeper having her hand held passionately by a handsome stranger.

Seeming to have regained his senses, Takatsuki turned to Shiho, who was sitting all the way back in her chair, looking at them as if to say, “What is up with these guys?”

Takatsuki was quite flustered.

“Ah, I-I’m sorry. It’s just, your story was so wonderful that I almost lost my sense of reason for a bit there!”

“Huh? You lose your sense of reason that easily?”

“I almost did, but it’s come back already, so I’m fine now! I’m really sorry. Please forgive my behavior.”

At Takatsuki’s apology, Shiho looked back and forth between him and Naoya with a bewildered expression. Naoya bowed his head to her as an added apology on his professor’s behalf.

Takatsuki cleared his throat.

“—Um, Miss Matsui. Let’s start with what I can tell you for now.”

His nose was still a little red, but he looked calm.

“First of all,” Takatsuki said to Shiho, “it really seems as though the Purple Mirror that’s been passed down in your family is quite unrelated to the typical ‘Purple Mirror’ story. So you don’t have to worry about the whole forgetting before you turn twenty thing.”

“What? But—”

Shiho looked doubtful.

“My mother definitely said, ‘If you still remember it by the time you’re twenty, you’ll die,’ and my father told me to forget about it, remember?”

“Do you remember how old your mother was when she disappeared?”

“Huh? Probably in her thirties… Oh.”

A look of understanding dawned on Shiho’s face.

“Still, we still don’t know at present why your mother disappeared. Or why your father told you to forget it. So—Miss Matsui,” Takatsuki said with a bright grin. “I think the only way to know more is to see the actual mirror in question. Could we go to see the Purple Mirror at your house now? If it’s all right, I’d like to speak to your father and the people at the inn a little bit.”

Shiho’s family’s inn was located near Nakamise-dori.

Nakamise-dori was a shopping street that led to Sensō-ji Temple. Along both sides of the stone-paved road that stretched straight out from Kaminarimon were rows of shops selling various goods such as sweets, souvenirs, wooden sandals, hairpins, and toys. There seemed to be kimono rental shops, too, as they saw people wearing kimono sort of as though they were cosplaying. Between the people stopping in the middle of the street to take pictures and those who were pausing to eat the sweets they had bought, the street was very crowded. There were lots of foreign tourists as well.

They made their way down Nakamise-dori for a while, before turning onto a side road where Shiho’s house was located. The house was a Japanese-style inn with a traditional townhouse exterior, and despite its small size, it had an elegance to it. According to Shiho, her family had been running the inn here since her great-grandfather’s generation.

“—Um, before we go inside, there’s something I have to ask of you.”

Shiho had turned abruptly to face Takatsuki and Naoya.

“The truth is, my father and I haven’t been seeing eye to eye lately. He wants me to take over the inn, but I don’t want to… Or rather, I’d like to leave home someday, if possible.”

“I don’t know what my father would say if he knew I invited a professor from a random university to come look into the Purple Mirror… So could we just say that the reason you came here today is because you’re researching Asakusa?”

“Sure, I mean, I don’t mind…”

Takatsuki glanced quickly at Naoya, as though checking that he was okay with the decision to lie.

Thinking there was no way around it, Naoya nodded. He could imagine it would indeed be hard to tell one’s parents about contacting an associate professor from a different school for advice on something that bordered on occult.

Shiho opened the lattice door to the house, revealing the reception area just inside. The interior of the inn was decorated with ukiyo-e prints and paper lanterns, giving it the atmosphere of an Edo era establishment. Next to the front desk were Edo era trinkets for sale that tourists from abroad were likely to enjoy.

A kimono-clad woman behind the front desk looked up when they entered.

“Welcome back, Shiho. And these gentlemen are?”

“I’m home, Mom,” Shiho said, confusing Naoya for a moment. Hadn’t her mother disappeared?

In a low voice, Shiho explained, “My father remarried when I was in middle school.”

I see, Naoya thought, looking at the woman again.

She seemed a tad young to be Shiho’s mother, but she had clearly both donned her kimono and done up her traditional Japanese-style hairdo with great skill. She had the air of an innkeeper.

“Mom, this is Professor Takatsuki. He’s researching Asakusa and decided to come to our place while he was in the area. He can come into the back with me, right?”

The woman in the kimono bowed to Takatsuki.

“Oh my, hello there. Thank you for looking after my daughter. Please make yourself at home. Shiho, I believe Natsuko is in the kitchen, so have her make some tea.”

“Got it. Oh, hey, Mom? Is Dad home right now?”

“He’s out for a bit. Did you need him for something?”

“Nope, that’s fine. It’s better if he’s not here.”

“Shiho. You’ve got to stop talking like that.”

The woman in the kimono frowned, and Shiho stuck out her tongue. She had said she didn’t get along with her father, but she seemed close with her stepmother.

“Well then, follow me, Professor.”

Shiho opened a door next to the front desk and beckoned to them. On the other side of the door, which was labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, seemed to be the living quarters. Just inside, Shiho took off her shoes and stepped up into a wooden corridor.