Nagasaki family home. Soyo's bedroom.
Soyo had been feeling drowsy in the early afternoon and had meant to take a short nap. She opened her eyes slowly. At some point during her sleep, her eye mask had slipped off and lay forgotten at the edge of the pillow.
Her eyes were open, but her body didn't move an inch.
The vivid blue of her irises had drained away, leaving them a hollow, ashen grey-blue.
Soyo lay there on the bed, utterly still. If anyone else had been in the room, they would not have been able to tell she was breathing at all.
She looked like a husk — a body emptied of its soul.
[Yoshiiro Chiose is dead.]
Yoshiiro Chiose is dead..
Yoshiiro Chiose… she's dead.
"Huu——"
She hadn't done anything wrong, and yet it had still happened——
"No, this time… I did something wrong. I made so many mistakes…"
Soyo's voice came out in broken fragments, as if it weren't rising from her throat at all but drifting down from somewhere impossibly far away.
Her lips were dry. Her face was sticky, soaked through with tears. The blanket, the sheets, the eye mask — all of it was drenched in sweat and tears.
Just like the clothes she'd been wearing that day in the dream when she disbanded the band — soaked all the way through.
That time, she had killed Crychic with her own hands.
No. None of that matters anymore.
Crychic — it doesn't matter…
Yoshiiro Chiose or Crychic — which one mattered more?
"I can't choose… I don't have either of them anymore. Gone, gone, everything is gone."
Soyo struggled up from the bed, her lips murmuring snatches of half-conscious words she wasn't even aware of saying. Her eyelids drooped heavily. Through the window, she saw the warm afternoon sun.
The world was so warm. Even her corpse of a body was being made warm by it.
For a few brief moments, she thought about jumping — just throwing herself off and being done with it.
"But… if I jump, I'll never be able to remember all those little moments with Chiose again."
In the dream she had an adoptive mother. In reality, she had nothing.
"Why… Mama… forgive me… that day I really, I really didn't mean to say it like that…"
Memories — how sweet they were. In the dreams that came later, her mother's face had long since grown a little blurry.
In the dream's future, she had lived alone for many years.
After her mama passed away, her mother rarely came home. It seemed like she was numbing herself with alcohol and work.
Whenever she did come home, her mother would lock herself in her room and cry.
She had probably loved Yoshiiro Chiose dearly too. She might have thought of Chiose as a little sister, or maybe as family——
Just the same as Soyo had.
Whenever her mother came home and cried, Soyo would cry too. The two of them — mother and daughter — would often end up holding each other on the sofa, weeping on and on together.
That was the sum of her time with her mother. Crying together.
Soyo lowered her head and dragged her body over to the sofa.
The dream was over.
The slippers in the real world were nothing like the bunny-ear slippers her adoptive mother had given her in the dream. The bedroom and living room had none of those warm, pretty little decorations either.
Even if… even if I could just never wake up, that would be fine.
Soyo felt herself crying again. This time the tears came without reason — even she only realised her eyes were crying when she noticed the wet patches on the floor. Her eyes… they were weeping all on their own.
"Even if… I could just never wake up, that would be fine."
After waking up, you only find out that you never had an adoptive mother to begin with.
Between losing a love you once had and never having had that love at all… maybe never having it at all hurts more.
No — Soyo didn't fit neatly into either category.
She was both at once. Because…
Soyo had never received that kind of love. And at the same time, she had received that kind of love — and then lost it.
The apartment was cold and still, and the tears falling from her face turned to cold rain.
"The letter. Right — I have to write down the letter Mama wrote me…"
Her limbs suddenly found a strength she had never felt before — the very last reserves of energy inside her.
After all, crying takes it out of you physically, and she didn't even know how long she had been crying in her sleep.
She kicked her bag aside and found paper. She rummaged roughly through her desk and found a pen.
Nagasaki Soyo bent over and stood at the desk, straining with everything she had to recall the letter her mama had left behind.
She had read that letter over and over in the dream, countless times without tiring of it, until she had it memorised so well she could recite it with her eyes closed.
The pen was trembling. No — Soyo's arm was trembling.
She had to grip her shaking forearm with her other hand, but that meant she couldn't wipe away the tears at the corners of her eyes…
Tears dripped onto the paper, but Soyo had no time to spare for them.
"Write… it hurts so much… but I have to keep writing…"
Mama, I was wrong. I'm sorry.
That day I said things I shouldn't have. I'm truly sorry.
I didn't know any better. I only ever took and took and took love without giving anything back in return. I'm sorry…
Mama, will you forgive me? If… if you're really out there…
I beg you not to forgive me. I really do — I feel so terrible about the tantrum I threw that day.
Please, show mercy to a little girl's rebellion. Please. She's hurting so, so much…
Soyo wrote at a furious pace — so furiously that she ran the pen completely dry.
But she kept writing. Numb writing. Stiff writing. Writing without any sense of fatigue at all.
She just wanted to write…
She switched to a pencil, but pressed too hard and snapped the tip. In the end it was a fountain pen that finally got her through to the last line.
Nagasaki Soyo held her masterpiece up high — a letter from her mother, transcribed in three different pens.
It was the only thing left in the real world that could settle her spirit.
Her anchor was gone. Only these words remained.
"Mama."
Soyo spent the very last of her strength and collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
She fell asleep — but it was an agonised sleep, her brow knitted tight the whole time.
…
Soyo slept until the middle of the night before she finally stirred.
She wandered through the apartment in a daze, and several times made her way out to the terrace, drawn to the edge with the thought of throwing herself off.
But each time, the wrenching pain inside her chest made her stop.
"Maybe Yoshiiro Chiose exists in this world too… I can't die. I have to find her."
I want to cherish her. I want to cherish the people I want to cherish — even if that person doesn't know me.
After all these years, the shadow of Crychic had finally stopped looming over Soyo's heart — because something far larger and far darker had already moved in and swallowed up every last cloud that had come before.
Soyo had cried herself into silence. While she lay in her stupor, she had endured a string of brief but vicious nightmares.
Her condition was getting worse and worse by the hour — and on top of that, she hadn't eaten a single thing all day. That only made it worse.
She walked barefoot across the floor. Here and there, patches of dried tears still marked the path she had taken earlier. A single glance at them made her chest ache.
The tear stains reflected her face back at her.
But the moment she caught sight of herself, Nagasaki Soyo felt sick.
At last she made it to the refrigerator. She leaned against the door for a moment to rest and gather herself, then finally found the strength to open it.
The door swung open softly. The light from inside stung Soyo's eyes.
She raised a hand to shield them. When she looked toward the refrigerator again, her pupils seized — once, again, and again — trembling without end.
"Ah… ah!"
Inside the refrigerator, there was really a bowl of ginseng chicken soup.
It sat quietly in its clay pot, only a sliver of it peeking out from under the lid — and yet that tiny glimpse was enough to send Soyo's heart into a frantic, stuttering panic.
"Mama… wuu, wuu, wuu…"
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