Another lonely Monday.
Every Monday was particularly rough for Nagasaki Soyo.
Not only did she have to contend with the same dread everyone else felt — that crushing sense of I just got a break and now I have to suffer again — she also had to endure the added misery of being separated from Yoshiiro Chiose's company, left to sit alone and listless in an oversized apartment.
Empty rooms. Lonely air. A silence so complete it felt like a graveyard.
She hated all of it.
Sometimes Soyo even found herself missing the old place — that cramped little unit they'd lived in before. The conditions had been rough, but there had been something warm and human about it.
Now that they'd moved to the new apartment… aside from her own bedroom, which Chiose had arranged and decorated until it felt cozy and personal, every other room felt like a showroom set up for guests.
This wasn't her home. It was just her address. Her family was somewhere out there. Not here.
Soyo sat alone on the wide terrace outside, letting the desolation of dusk wash over her.
The last light of the sun painted the side of her face in slow, steady strokes of amber.
Earlier in the day, Sakiko had sought her out and promised she'd do everything in her power to help.
Sakiko was such a strange person. This had nothing to do with her — and yet she'd gone and extended a hand anyway, out of sheer goodwill.
She was a little like those wandering heroes from wuxia novels, or the gunslinging prospectors of the old West, or maybe a weathered pirate sailing the Caribbean — someone who lived by some deeply personal code of conviction.
Genuinely hard to figure out.
At the very least, Soyo couldn't imagine doing half as much for a classmate she barely knew, if their positions were reversed.
Then the doorbell rang — sharp and sudden, shattering the stillness of the apartment.
[Could it be Sakiko? Coming to give me an update on things?]
Sakiko had indeed asked for her home address, saying she'd come by once she'd sorted things out.
Nagasaki Soyo set down her teacup. She'd been brewing her own tea more and more lately. It was strange — money had a way of cultivating tastes you'd never have believed possible in yourself.
She padded across the hollow living room in her fluffy bunny slippers — a gift from Chiose, who clearly still thought of her as a little kid despite how grown-up Soyo considered herself to be. The woman kept buying these unbearably cute things.
Not that she liked them.
Her hand rested on the door handle. As she pulled it open, a small voice grumbled away inside her head: [That's a lie, I love them. Everything Mama gives me, I love.]
The door swung halfway open. Soyo had expected Sakiko — but the figure standing there was someone she hadn't dared to hope for.
"Happy Monday, my darling girl."
Yoshiiro Chiose's hand was warm as ever. It settled on top of Soyo's head, and in an instant, every trace of exhaustion and melancholy was drawn clean out of her.
"Mama? Weren't you supposed to be working today? How did you…"
How do you have time to come be with me?
Soyo didn't get to finish her sentence. Chiose slipped her hands under Soyo's arms and hoisted her up — or tried to.
Chiose could distinctly feel that she was losing the ability to lift Soyo properly. There had been a time when it was easy.
Her arms trembled with the effort. She managed only a token lift before setting Soyo back down.
"I've been a little under the weather lately, so I've been taking on less work. I was just sitting at home with nothing to do, so I came to keep you company."
"That's — great! Ah, I don't mean the being-under-the-weather part — I mean the resting is good — wait, that's not right either — um, ugh."
"Pfft. You hopeless child."
"Oh, right — little Soyo, guess who I ran into on the way here."
"Who?"
Chiose pulled the door fully open and stepped aside, opening up Soyo's field of view.
And there she was — blue hair in twin tails, amber eyes.
"Sakiko?"
Well… that was a buzzkill.
Her mother had come all this way to see her, and there was someone else tagging along? Sakiko was a good person, she knew that — but right now Soyo couldn't quite bring herself to feel warmly toward her.
There was a small knot somewhere inside her chest, and a whole lot of things she couldn't say to anyone — things that probably came out darker than she intended.
"Good evening, Soyo. I ran into Chiose-nee in the stairwell, so we came up together."
"Ha… what a coincidence. What a coincidence indeed."
Chiose stood at the doorway, watching the two girls make their way into the living room to talk, before quietly closing the door behind her.
She knew well enough what these two had to discuss — whatever unpleasant business had been going on at school.
Truthfully, none of this had gone the way Chiose had anticipated.
Not The System's methods, not the depth of Soyo's reliance on her, and certainly not Sakiko's response — all of it had blown far past the boundaries of what she'd planned for.
The System had gone too far. Soyo's dependency on her had exceeded anything she'd expected. And Sakiko Togawa's character was nothing like she'd imagined.
[So this is what Sakiko was like in her first year of middle school?]
Nothing like the slightly prickly, down-on-her-luck young noblewoman who lived next door in reality.
That Sakiko — the one from next door — would never throw herself into helping someone else like this. That Sakiko could barely afford to eat.
It was… genuinely baffling.
What had turned Sakiko into the person she became? What on earth had happened to these girls?
Chiose drifted through the living room into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stood there staring blankly at the vegetables and fruit inside.
"What is their story, I wonder…"
The painful, unforgettable adolescence Tomori had described. The past that had shaped Soyo into the poised, self-possessed person she was now. The shift in Sakiko — from gracious and warm-hearted to penniless and stubborn.
The middle school years of these girls genuinely fascinated her.
"Looks like this business trip can be extended just a little longer. I've already meddled enough to shift the story's trajectory — but there's still so much backstory left to uncover, I'd think.
"For instance——"
"You two must be tired from school — I didn't find much in the kitchen, so I just sliced up some fruit. Have a little before you keep talking."
Chiose poured every ounce of tenderness and maternal warmth into those words, and Soyo was immediately wrapped up in it, helpless and content.
"Thank you, Chiose-nee."
Sakiko Togawa had, by this point, largely resolved the matter.
She knew Soyo had only transferred recently and had limited footing to act from — but for someone like Sakiko, who had attended Tsuki no Mori Girls' High School since childhood, it was a much simpler affair to navigate.
"So that's more or less the situation. I've spoken with both of them — they've acknowledged what they did. They'll come and apologize to you tomorrow. Will you forgive them, Soyo?"
"Ah… well…"
Soyo glanced at Sakiko, then shifted her gaze to Chiose.
Both of them were watching — but Chiose's eyes especially held a deep, quiet attentiveness, and in that look Soyo recognized something: this was a chance to show her mother just how much Nagasaki Soyo had grown.
She had to make it count.
"I won't forgive them."
"Oh? Well, that's also…"
"No — I won't forgive them, but I'm not going to pursue it any further either. There's no point."
Nagasaki Soyo adopted Yoshiiro Chiose's manner — unhurried, head slightly bowed, voice calm and even — and said:
"They aren't worth wasting my feelings on."
Because feelings, after all, ought to be saved for the people you truly treasure.
People like her Mama… Yoshiiro Chiose.
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