Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jessica hadn't gotten a good look at him at the funeral. Her eyes had been blinded with tears over something so stupid that she didn't have any pictures of her parents to put up, and she was so relieved to be given the offer of a roof over her head and a place for Ange as well that wasn't with Aunt Kyrie's creepy relatives that she hadn't really seen him. She hadn't gotten a good look at him.

In retrospect, that had been pretty stupid of her, considering that this was the man Jessica and Ange were going to be living with indefinitely.

Jessica had never felt more than passing curiosity about her mother's family. That was something else that had been stupid of her. However, the little tidbits of information Natsuhi gave her coupled with the sharp scolding she'd get if she asked too much (This is your family, Jessica, you and me and your father and grandfather; this is your only family) had dampened Jessica's curiosity to the point that she hadn't really asked about them since elementary school. Natsuhi always told her that her father's family was her only family, told her this with such vehemence that now, when Jessica could no longer hear her voice, she wondered for the first time just what her mother had meant by it.

All Jessica knew of her mother's family was that they were an old, aristocratic family who traditionally were the keepers of a shrine out in; there was something small weighing down her pocket, proof of that. Well, that and that her maternal grandmother had died when she was twelve. Jessica still remembered the way Natsuhi's face had turned pale and closed-off when she received the letter, the way she had returned to her room for the rest of the day and hadn't come down for supper in the evening, despite Krauss's protests and Kinzo's mockery. Sometimes, Jessica wondered if she had been crying in there. Sometimes, she wondered why she hadn't tried to talk to her mom, after that.

"Can you handle that bag, Ange?"

They were going to have to leave some of the luggage at the mouth of the driveway and come back for it later. Most of it was Ange's, the clothes and books and stuffed animals she had refused to part with and Jessica couldn't bear to make her leave behind, along with her hairbrush and toothbrush and all the other things a young girl needed.

In comparison, Jessica had relatively little. She had used some of her newfound wealth to buy a few changes of clothes, the toiletries she needed, a couple of books from the last gas station the man who got them here had stopped at, and a suitcase to put it all in. The only other things she had were her guitar, since she kept it at school, and the clothes she had been wearing when… when it had happened. Even her inhaler was new.

Ange shot her a defensive look, saying nothing as she hefted the pink bag in her small arms. Jessica bit back a frustrated sigh as she watched her cousin start to walk down the long, dusty driveway they'd been told to follow.

Ange had cried for what felt like forever when she found out that she was going to have to leave her grandfather's house, but after she stopped crying, she fell into a surly sort of silence that she only broke with one-word answers to questions. She didn't like this, not at all. She didn't have to. Ange's grandfather had seemed alright, but the rest of the Sumadera family gave Jessica a really bad feeling about the "plans" they had for Ange. The six-year-old may have thought differently, but she was better off away from them.

"Wait up, Ange!" Jessica called after her. She grabbed a few of the bags and ran after Ange until she caught up with her cousin.

As they walked up the driveway, Jessica wondered why the house was so far back from the road. It was within easy walking distance of town; that, Jessica understood and was grateful for, because she didn't have a driver's license and somehow she doubted that their host had a car. But the house was so far back from the road that, thanks to the trees in the field out in front of it, Jessica couldn't even see the house.

I guess if the family's as old as Mom said it was, the house could have been around since before there were cars. So people would have come up here in carriages or wagons or on horses or whatever people got around in back then. But that wouldn't have been any better, and what about the people who had to walk.

Eventually, they got close enough for Jessica to get a good look at the house. It was every inch a traditional-looking house, the exact antithesis of the sort of place Jessica had grown up in. (She wondered if the house had central heating or air conditioning; the latter she could probably live without, but life without the former would get uncomfortable come winter, given that Jessica and Ange had both up to now lived in houses with central heating.) The house was very reminiscent of the Sumadera family compound, down to the little garden, pond and water basin just off to the side. It was just as large and imposing, but when Jessica looked at it, she didn't get the same oppressive feeling that she had gotten looking at the Sumadera's estate. This house just felt… empty. It was a bit like the field out in front of it; those trees weren't enough to make it feel like anything with anything in it, and if the wind blew over the roof, that would just make it feel even emptier.

There was a man standing at the end of the driveway.

Jessica felt her breath catch in her chest. It wasn't the kind of catching that would necessitate whipping her inhaler out of her pocket, but all the same, it wasn't comfortable. As they approached, she wished, over and over again, that she'd gotten a better look at him at the funeral.

She had never met anyone from her mother's family while Natsuhi was still alive. She knew that her maternal grandmother was dead, that she had two uncles and might have cousins too. And here, here was her grandfather, waiting to greet them.

He was a small man, shorter than Jessica, back bent with age. His face was clean-shaven and deeply lined, his head completely bald except for a thin layer of wispy silver hair. The elderly man wore traditional clothing, a kimono and hakama in shades of somber gray. Behind his thick glasses, the look in his dark eyes was a sad one.

"Good afternoon, Jessica," he said quietly, bowing briefly to her.

"Good afternoon, Grandfather," Jessica replied nervously, bowing back and feeling utterly gauche as she did so. She had been taught to curtsey, not bow, and it only reminded her of how out of place she was, how different the Ushiromiya family had been from the outside world.

All of a sudden, Ange dropped the bag she had been holding and hid behind Jessica, latching her arms around her cousin's leg. Jessica, eyebrows raised, stared down at her, and saw Ange frowning dubiously at the man standing before her.

He noticed as well, it seemed. "Good afternoon, Ange-chan," he greeted the girl gravely, inclining his head in her direction. "Furude Akihito, at your service."

Ange made no response, frowning even more deeply at Akihito than before. Jessica considered trying to make her speak, but bit her tongue. She tried to force herself not to notice the way her grandfather seemed like someone barely going through the motions of life, nor the way Ange radiated distrust. She couldn't quite manage it, though, and she was left fighting the urge to run away and scream where no one could hear her. "Umm, we had to leave some of our stuff at the road. Can you show us where we're staying, so I can run and go get the rest of it?" Jessica was a bit proud of how calm she managed to sound, even if her voice was a bit squeaky.

"Of course."

The interior of the house gave off the same impression Jessica had gotten staring at it from the driveway: emptiness. Some of her friends in Niijima had lived in traditional houses, as opposed to Western-style houses. It wasn't like she was unused to being inside of a traditional Japanese house. But none of her friends' houses had felt so empty as this one. It wasn't just the dearth of furniture, though that certainly didn't help. This house felt as though it hadn't been really lived in for years.

Once she had gotten the last of Ange's luggage inside, Jessica paused for a moment in her new room, before going to help Ange unpack. It was about the same size as the room she had had in the mansion on Rokkenjima, but thanks to the fact that it was mostly lacking in furniture, it seemed much larger. The floor was not carpeted, but bare hardwood slats. There was a large window covered with blinds; the only furniture was an empty bookcase and a large, free-standing wardrobe, inside of which Jessica found a pillow and a futon and blanket folded neatly away.

It took about five minutes for Jessica to put away her clothes, put her toiletries in the bathroom, and carefully lay her guitar in a corner of the room. She stared at it bitterly, feeling a lump grow and harden in her throat. How many times had Jessica wished that she could take her guitar home and show her family that she could play, without fear that her mom would scold her and make her get rid of it?

Well, she didn't have to worry about that anymore. But it didn't really seem like it was worth it.

-0-0-0-

The house, despite its old-fashioned appearance, was home to a number of modern conveniences (Including space heaters in both Jessica and Ange's rooms). All the same, Jessica was surprised to see a raised table and chairs in the kitchen come dinnertime. Akihito waved it off, saying that as he grew older, he found it easier to sit in a chair than on the floor while he ate. He also said that there was a dining hall, but that it was no longer used. Jessica wouldn't be surprised if she found out that it had been years since enough people had come to call on Furude Akihito for him to open the dining hall in his house.

It felt weird, sitting at such a small table while she ate a meal with her family. Natsuhi or Kinzo had always insisted that the Ushiromiya family take every meal in the mansion's dining hall (Except for when Kinzo had shut himself up in his study and insisted on having Genji take his meals up to him). Jessica was used to sitting at a massive table that was, at times, completely full, but more often had just three or four people sitting at the very edge. She was used to that feeling of the rest of the table falling into oblivion.

Jessica was not used to sitting at a table in a kitchen that only sat four. She was not used to eating dinner in the same room as the one where her dinner had been prepared. And while her mom knew how to cook, and Jessica had been taught how to cook as well, she wasn't used to eating her meals at the same table as the one who had cooked them.

There were no servants here, none that Jessica had seen. It had occurred to her that this branch of the Furude family, while old and prestigious, might not be as well off as the Ushiromiya family. The sheer number of shut-up or completely unfurnished rooms she had encountered while wandering the house for a while had given her that impression. While there were many unused rooms in the Ushiromiya family mansion, never were they shut up or left unfurnished; they were always left well-kept and ready to be used.

She guessed that meant that she and Ange would be called upon to help clean up when the house needed to be cleaned. That was fine. Jessica had some experience cleaning up at school, and in the past few months, her mom had started to insist that Jessica shadow her when she did her rounds in the mansion, checking to be sure that the servants had cleaned up as they were supposed to. This may have been her grandfather's house, but it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go. Jessica didn't want to risk seeming like a burden to her host—or more of a burden than she already was, anyways.

Compared to what Jessica was used to, the food was plain. A bowl of rice, tuna sashimi, and a bowl of tsukemono¹ consisting of umeboshi, cabbage, turnip and what Jessica suspected was eggplant. It was plain, but after days of having no appetite at all, and then only being able to eat greasy takeout and junk food, it was such a relief to eat real food again. Ange seemed to feel the same way; she had dug into her meal with more enthusiasm than Jessica thought that she had ever seen her show.

The meal was also one taken in silence, also something Jessica wasn't used to—she just seemed to be running into that again and again. Ange wasn't interested in talking, and neither, it seemed, was Jessica's grandfather. Akihito sat at the table across from Jessica, saying nothing. Frankly, he seemed to be avoiding making eye contact with her or Ange.

It didn't feel right, trying to initiate a conversation if her grandfather seemed uninterested in talking. Of course, Jessica had to admit that she was thinking of Kinzo. When Kinzo wanted silence, Kinzo got silence; if anyone besides Doctor Nanjo or Genji or sometimes Kumasawa broke this rule, they would regret it dearly. Jessica was amazed that she still had this mindset, when Kinzo had been dead for two years and she had been helping her parents hide it…

No, better not to even think about that. The police had asked her about that, gently, but their questions had been probing enough that Jessica knew it was better not to even think about that. Ushiromiya Kinzo had been alive until the second day of the family conference in 1986. No one could ever be allowed to dispute that.

Her maternal grandfather was nothing like Kinzo. He was quiet and little. From what little Jessica had seen of him, he seemed grave and serious, but not brooding or tyrannical. He didn't strike Jessica as the sort of man who'd hit his children or grandchildren or threaten to withhold food from them if they didn't live up to his dining standards.

She wished he would talk, though.

She couldn't think of anything to say to him, and wished even more that she could.

I ought to have a thousand questions to ask him. Mom barely told me anything about her family. This is her father, my grandfather. There's so much he could tell me. But… But I can't think of anything to ask him. There's nothing I want to say.

Right now.

Not all of the dinners eaten at the dining room table in the mansion had been so fraught, however. Gohda always loved to show off his cooking skills even when he didn't have a large audience to appreciate it. Her parents would discuss Krauss's business ventures. Doctor Nanjo would bring news from the mainland. Jessica would talk about her day at school, and sometimes, sometimes it would turn out that she'd done something outstanding enough to earn her parents' praise.

In comparison to the silence in which she now sat, Jessica would take those days back, even if they had to be the days when they feared Kinzo's wrath.

-0-0-0-

Ange was looking at her. It wasn't a particularly pleasant look.

They were getting ready for bed, Jessica wondering what it would be like to sleep on a futon after sleeping all her life on raised beds, Ange maintaining her stubborn silence. But just as Jessica was about to turn off the lights and lay down, Ange appeared in the doorway, wearing the look that Jessica saw now.

"What is it, Ange?" Jessica asked with a false note of cheer in her voice. No, she did not like that look at all. It was way too piercing for a little six-year-old girl, too piercing and too cold.

Ange mumbled something. She was staring down at the ground now; Jessica watched with some trepidation as her slight shoulders drew up and began to shake.

"What's up, Ange?" she asked again, getting down on her knees in front of her cousin.

"…I want them back," Ange muttered.

Jessica felt her breath catch in her chest again, another hard lump forming in her throat. She was already pretty sure that she knew what Ange meant. In Jessica's mind, there was only one thing Ange could mean. But on the off-chance that she meant something else, on the off-chance that a show of ignorance could keep this talk from going where Jessica didn't want it to go, she would gladly feign ignorance. "Who, Ange?"

Ange's face scrunched up; angry color flooded into her cheeks. "Mom and Daddy and Onii-chan, I want them back!"

Oh God, why?

"Ange…" Jessica's voice cracked. "I can't…"

"I want them back!" Ange half-shouted, tears dripping down her cheeks. Her voice dropped down to a quavering moan. "I want them back." Her words were garbled by sobs.

Everything Jessica had been holding in since after the funeral broke forth like water escaping from a broken dam. The world before her blurred as her eyes filled with tears. A ragged sob tore from her throat. There were so many things she couldn't tell anyone, especially not Ange. There were so many things she wanted to say.

She wanted to see her parents again. She wanted to thank them for trying so hard to raise her to be a good person. Show them her guitar, show them that she had a talent that neither of them had guessed at, show them that she had something that, maybe, some day, they could be proud of. She'd apologize to her mom for being such a pain sometimes, and to both of them, for not being the daughter they had wanted her to be. If she could.

Chapter Text

That night, Ange had nightmares.

She didn't cry or scream or go running for help. Ange was a big girl now, and big girls didn't do any of those things when they had bad dreams. Nightmares weren't real; they couldn't hurt her. Mom said…

Mom…

Ange dreamed that she was all alone, in a dark room where her only company was a stuffed animal she didn't want to touch and a big leather-bound book that looked familiar, though she could no longer say how. That was all Ange remembered clearly of the dream. She had the suggestion of voices and movement, like whispering from another room and catching sight of darting shadows out of the corner of her eye, but it was all a blur. Ange awoke feeling jumpy and out of place, clutching her stuffed cat to her chest, but even petting the doll's sleek black fur was not enough to calm her, not fully.

It was when she remembered that she had gone to sleep in a strange room, lying down on a futon instead of a bed, that Ange realized why she felt out of place.

Even with all the things she had brought with her inside, the room still felt heartbreakingly bare. Ange's stuffed animals, piled up against the wall, couldn't hide that the walls had no pictures on them and that the floor was just bare hardwood. The sunlight cutting across the floor in strips couldn't hide the fact that Mom hadn't come in to wake her up, that there was no sound of Onii-chan brushing his teeth, no smell of Daddy brewing his favorite coffee.

She didn't want to believe it. There had been a funeral for her parents and her brother, but their caskets were empty. How could there be a funeral without a corpse? How could people say that her family was dead without their bodies to confirm it?

But everyone said that her family and all of Daddy's relatives besides Jessica Onee-chan was dead. There had been a wake and a funeral for them, even without corpses. Onee-chan had screamed terrifyingly at some reporters when they tried to come ask her questions. The woman from the police department said that her family was "dead" (Actually, what she said was "presumed dead", a complicated phrase that nonetheless signaled no hope of their recovery). Even her grandfather and her other Sumadera relatives said that her family was dead, the former in tones of sincere regret and the latter with such sugary voices that Ange suspected they weren't sorry at all.

Everyone said her parents and brother were dead. Everyone said it, so it must have been true, after all.

Ange had wanted to stay with her grandfather. Grandfather, she knew and loved; she already stayed with him whenever Mom and Daddy had to go on long trips and couldn't take her with them. But Jessica Onee-chan said no. Why? Onee-chan said she couldn't stay with Mom's relatives; why? Sure, Grandmother was scary and Aunt Kasumi was a creep, but Grandfather was nice, and from what little she had seen of them, so were her cousins, Aunt Kasumi's kids. Grandfather would have kept her safe, wouldn't he?

That wasn't good enough for Onee-chan.

So now Ange was living in a house in Kyushu, just outside of a town she had never heard of. They had gone to stay with Onee-chan's grandfather, Aunt Natsuhi's father. Everything about the house and the man who lived here made Ange ache for her grandfather and his familiar home even more.

An image of Onee-chan crying in front of her flashed through Ange's mind. Her stomach churned, and she felt more unsettled than ever.

She sighed and clambered to her feet, folding up her blankets and her futon before doing anything else—Ange may have only slept on a futon at her grandfather's house, but she knew how this worked, really (Didn't stop it from feeling weird, though). The next step was to put them away, before getting dressed. It was when Ange went to put her futon, blankets and pillow away in the wardrobe that she discovered a problem.

Her pajamas had been put in a small chest inside of the wardrobe, but all of Ange's day clothes were hung up on the rail inside of the wardrobe. Ange scowled up at them. I can't reach the rail.

No matter what Ange did, she couldn't reach the rail. She could stretch all she liked, stand on her tiptoes, but her little hands barely brushed the tips of her clothes. There was no step-stool, and the chest inside of the wardrobe wasn't tall enough to let Ange reach. Her suitcases, stacked together, might have done the trick, but Ange didn't know where they were, and Mom said it didn't work the way it did in movies anyways, so…

So there was only one thing for Ange to do.

Her feet felt like they were dragging chains behind them as she crossed the hall to Jessica Onee-chan's room. But Ange was too old not to ask for help when she needed it, so she knocked on the door. "Onee-chan?"

The door slid open surprisingly quickly. Onee-chan was dressed, though her long blonde hair was loose and disheveled. Ange saw bloodshot eyes, and felt a pang. "What is it, Ange?" she asked in the too-light tone Ange had grown accustomed to. Onee-chan's voice was still noticeably scratchy, though.

"I can't reach my clothes," Ange replied flatly.

Onee-chan didn't seem eager to bring up what had happened last night. She nodded and slipped past Ange into the hall. "I'll help you get some down, Ange; come on."

The selection of clothes was a quiet affair in which neither of the two girls really looked at one another. "I want the green sweater." "With the purple skirt? Ange, green and purple don't really go together." "I don't care." "…Okay, then."

Jessica Onee-chan handed Ange the clothes she wanted to wear. She laughed (a touch hollow and brittle), and said, "I'll ask Grandfather if he has a step ladder around here. I know you'd rather be able to do this yourself."

Ange nodded silently, frowning at the clothes she now held in her arms. Met with silence, Jessica Onee-chan started to leave, but Ange called her back. "Onee-chan?"

The gaze of light blue eyes settled upon her face. Jessica Onee-chan tried a smile, but this time she didn't seem able to hold it up for long, so Ange could only watch as her lips tilted downwards into almost timid uncertainty. "What's up?"

"…" Ange stared at her. Her words were trying to stick in her throat; she held the image of Onee-chan crying in her mind, but the words were difficult to say. "I… I'm sorry I made you cry," she managed at last, in a small voice.

For a long time, she got no answer. Jessica Onee-chan wasn't one for long silences, Ange knew that, and her silence felt ominous, even if she didn't mean it that way. Finally, Jessica Onee-chan got down on her knees in front of Ange. This close up, Ange saw that not only were Onee-chan's eyes bloodshot, but her eyes and nostrils were both red-rimmed as well. She looked far older than eighteen.

"Listen, Ange… I… I know it's hard. I miss them, too. And I know you'd rather live with your grandfather …But… we've gotta stick together. We're in this together."

Jessica Onee-chan smiled weekly at Ange, and slowly, cautiously, Ange nodded back.

-0-0-0-

The days to follow were slow and moved with interminable sluggishness. Most of them, Ange spent alone. Sure, she ate meals with Onee-chan and her grandfather (And uncomfortable, quiet affairs they were, too). Once, Ange and Onee-chan went out and explored the property together, wading through tall grass and walking under tall trees. But for the most part, Ange was by herself, and quite frankly, she preferred it that way.

She would play with her stuffed animals, sometimes, or with the porcelain doll Battler Onii-chan had given her for her last birthday. It entertained Ange for a few minutes, but inevitably lost its appeal. Ange had never been like Maria Onee-chan, who was so good at pretend that she could hold long, involved conversations with her stuffed animals and her dolls; Ange hadn't even given her stuffed animals names. And the doll, with its silky black hair, white satin dress, black stockings and smart red shoes, was beautiful, but it reminded her too much of Onii-chan. It sat with the stuffed animals with its hands on its lap, forlorn and neglected.

Ange would read her books, too, in her room or outside. Reading, losing herself in the world of the book, it was truly a relief. It was a relief to forget. But all too soon, Ange ran out of books she hadn't read, and it had been too soon since she last read the others to derive any enjoyment from them. Maybe there was a library in town she could check books out from, but she didn't ask.

So Ange was, at last, left to wander the house and its grounds, filling her days, trying to find something new to look at, and wondering how much longer she would have to live like this. Alone, her thoughts ran to the past. Every breath of wind sounded like Mom was calling her to come inside. Every time she heard something that could have been taken for footsteps, she thought she was going to see Daddy. Sometimes, Ange would hide in a shaded place and cry until she was so exhausted that she could barely see straight.

Jessica Onee-chan would go out into the garden with her guitar from time to time. From her hiding place behind a bush or just inside the house, peering out a window, Ange would watch her. Onee-chan spent a long time tuning the guitar—sometimes, Mom and Daddy would watch concerts on television; Onee-chan tuning her guitar reminded Ange of watching violinists tune their violins. She would take a deep breath, or put her inhaler to her lips, not actually using it, just putting her mouth around it. Then, she would start to play.

Maybe Ange was too young to really tell, but she thought that Onee-chan's guitar playing was fantastic. Her fingers seemed to glide effortlessly across the strings; she could play both slow songs and fast ones, sad songs and happy songs. Her singing was very pretty as well. Onee-chan had a light, high-pitched singing voice that never wavered when she sang. In spite of her asthma, she could sing all the way through a song without losing her breath and needing her inhaler.

There was a pall over all of this, though. Even when she sang happy songs, Jessica Onee-chan did not sound particularly happy. Little enthusiasm could be found in her voice; she seemed to be doing nothing but going through the motions.

Still, Ange couldn't help but listen, and she was not the only one. She could spy Onee-chan's grandfather standing in a doorway at the opposite end of the garden from where Ange was hiding. Furude-san watched his granddaughter with a far-away look on his face that made Ange feel very lonely whenever she saw it. His dark eyes could not have been torn from his granddaughter's face when she sang.

Onee-chan never saw Ange hiding and watching her, but she did sometimes realize that her grandfather was there. She would hop up from the bench she sat on, laying her guitar down and plastering a huge, false smile on her face as she went to greet him. Furude-san spoke so quietly that Ange could not hear what he said to his granddaughter; Jessica Onee-chan's loud chatter was difficult to make out. Inevitably, she left, and Furude-san would take her place on the bench, seeming as forlorn as the doll Ange left sitting in her room.

Today, he sang.

Furude-san's voice was a far cry from his granddaughters. Of course, a man's singing voice would always be a far cry from a light-voiced woman's, but there was more to it than that. Furude-san was old, and it showed in his voice. When he sang, his voice cracked and warbled where Onee-chan's never would have. But there was still something about it, something about that low, meandering voice, that caught Ange's attention and held it fast.

Jessica Onee-chan usually sang new pop songs you could hear on the radio, if you turned it to the right station. Furude-san sang a song that Ange had never heard before, about a bottomless pond and weeping gods. When he finished singing, Ange slipped out from behind the bush she had been hiding under. He didn't see her; she could have just gone back into the house, and part of Ange wanted to do just that. But instead, Ange's feet carried her to the bench where Furude-san sat, and she climbed up onto it beside him.

For all that Furude-san hadn't seen Ange before, he didn't seem terribly surprised when she came out of hiding. "Good afternoon, Ange-chan," he said to her, with all the graveness and subdued dignity of their first meeting.

Ange stared at him, feeling her mind run dry of words yet again. What to say to him, to this man who was both like her grandfather and yet not like him? She picked at her fingernails self-consciously.

At least Furude-san did not seem offended by her silence as some adults were when Ange didn't respond to them right away. He did not say anything more himself, tearing his gaze away from her to survey the garden made largely barren by the oncoming winter. After a few moments, it was as though he had forgotten she was there.

The sense of anonymity that gave Ange helped her find words to say to this man. "You're a priest, aren't you, Furude-san?"

He nodded, just as unsurprised by her sudden question as he had been by her appearance earlier. "Yes, I am. My family lived by the shrine in town long ago, but we were forced to relocate our home to this place."

"Umm… You've haven't been to the shrine lately, though."

"No, I haven't. I took the past few days off, entrusting the shrine to my assistant. He could use the practice."

"Oh."

Ange stared down at her feet. The bench was not that high up; her feet brushed the ground. She could scuff at the dir if she wished, but didn't; she felt as though it wouldn't be allowed, as though she was breaking some unspoken rule if she tampered with the garden in any way. The entire house felt exactly the same way, and only more so when Ange was in Furude-san's presence.

"I sense that you have something else to say." He was looking at her with a rather prompting expression on his lined face.

It might not have been a good idea, but Ange decided to voice the desire in her heart anyways. "…I want to see my grandfather," she admitted, a defensive frown coming over her small face.

To her surprise, Furude-san smiled at her, gently, sadly. "I know you do, my dear." A shadow passed over his face. "No one should be separated from a loving family at such a young age. But I'm afraid it could not be helped." Seeing Ange's face fall, he added, "I imagine that you could visit him over winter break, if circumstances permit."

Ange couldn't help but brighten at that.

-0-0-0-

"You really want to wear those to bed?"

Big girls did not insist on sleeping with other people if it wasn't a slumber party, but Ange felt the need to make an exception tonight. As a result, she and Jessica Onee-chan had dragged her futon and blankets into the latter's room, pushing their futons up against each other's so they could lie next to each other during the night.

Ange clutched at her hair baubles and shook her head, scowling fiercely. "Uh-uh."

Onee-chan gaped at her. "Seriously? Doesn't it hurt trying to lay down with those pressing against your head?"

"Not taking them off," Ange insisted stubbornly.

"Well, why not?

"Onii-chan gave them to me. I won't take them off."

Jessica Onee-chan's face seemed to crumple for a moment, and Ange's stomach twisted in knots as she wondered if her cousin would start to cry again. But after a while, she smiled weakly and pulled at one of the pink baubles. "You do take them off in the tub, though, don't you?"

Ange gaped at her. "I'm not dumb, Onee-chan!" she protested. "Mom says the paint will fade if I get them wet a lot!"

This served nothing but to engender another awkward silence, one that Ange was surprised to hear Onee-chan break with a story of her own. "I guess you're smarter than me, Ange. When I was your age, I had this hair ribbon that I liked so much that I wouldn't take it off at all, not even when I was bathing."

Ange's eyes widened. "I bet Aunt Natsuhi was really mad."

"Yeah, she was. She got so mad she threw the ribbon away."

"What happened?"

Jessica Onee-chan laughed a little, rubbing the back of her neck. "Oh, I cried for days. But to be honest, nowadays I can't even remember what color the ribbon was."

That struck Ange as more than a little outlandish. She couldn't imagine if, heaven forbid she should ever lose the hair baubles Battler Onii-chan won for her, that she would ever forget what color they were. How could she ever forget the color of such a beloved gift as her pink hair baubles? But she was not Onee-chan. Plainly Onee-chan's hair ribbon had not been as dear to her as Ange's hair baubles were to her.

Ange saw Jessica Onee-chan pick something up from the top of her bookcase, something that shimmered and glistened when it caught the light. "What's that?" she asked curiously.

Onee-chan smiled (a bit more genuinely this time) and sat down beside Ange. She was holding a mirror about the size of a compact in her hand. The mirror was rimmed and backed with silver, and looked to Ange's eyes to be very old. "It's a magic mirror," she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

"Magic's not real," Ange blurted out. "Mom said it's all tricks." In her mind's eye, Maria Onee-chan could be seen crying uncontrollably as she clutched a stuffed animal to her chest, but she pushed the image away uncomfortably.

"I know, I know; just let me finish." Onee-chan held the mirror face up on her palm. She stared at it with an odd look on her face, brow furrowed. "This is a spirit mirror, Ange. When my mom got married, her grandfather gave it to her. People have been telling stories about there being evil spirits on Rokkenjima for ages, and this mirror's supposed to repel those spirits."

Ange looked intently down at the mirror in Jessica Onee-chan's hand. Some of the books she read had mirrors that talked back to those who spoke to them; others were portals to fantastical worlds. In comparison, this mirror didn't seem nearly impressive enough to do the job it was supposed to. Thus, there was no hiding the skepticism in her voice when she asked, "Can it really do that, Onee-chan?"

To Ange's surprise (and some annoyance), Jessica Onee-chan laughed at her. "I don't know, Ange." Her face sobered. "I really don't. But I do know that we're starting school again in the morning. We've gotta get some sleep." She put the mirror away, and turned out the lights. "Good night, Ange."

When Jessica lied down on her futon, Ange curled up next to her. "Good night, Onee-chan."

That night, Ange did not have nightmares.

Chapter Text

Jessica didn't remember being this nervous when she entered high school for the first time. In fact, she remembered being quite excited to be leaving the world of junior high behind her and entering into what, at the time, she had thought was the gateway to glorious womanhood (Sometimes, Jessica had to look back on herself and laugh bitterly). High school had seemed like a rite of passage, rather than something to be feared. Jessica couldn't help but think that if she had known about Calculus and Chemistry in junior high, she probably wouldn't have been so enthusiastic, but as a fifteen-year-old girl, she had entered into high school with nothing but enthusiasm.

It helped that all of her junior high friends were going to the same high school as her. There was only one high school on Niijima—to find others, you would have needed to look inland. All of Jessica's friends were Niijima natives; they weren't going to be heading to any high school further on the mainland. Jessica had gone to school surrounded by all of her friends and classmates. She was hardly a stranger in a strange land; while she might not have known every name she was confronted with, she did know nearly every face.

And Jessica had had plenty of friends, too. She had, from time to time, suspected that her family name might have been behind some of her popularity, but had pushed the thought out of her head. After all, it seemed unlikely that most of her friends would have been able to stand her for very long if they hadn't genuinely liked her, and it wasn't like any of them had ever asked her for money or anything like that. They even helped her keep her guitar and everything that went along with it secret from her parents.

But today was nothing like the day when she'd entered high school in Niijima.

Through the aftermath of her family's deaths, through the funeral, through being questioned by the police and looking after Ange, going back to school had never been a thought that occurred to Jessica. Why should it have? Jessica didn't know too many people who would have been eager to go back to school after something like this. But her grandfather pointed out that Ange, at least, had to go back to school, and Jessica felt like she had to go back as well.

Her mother had never finished high school. Natsuhi didn't talk much about her life before she married Jessica's father, and frankly, she didn't talk much more about the years before Jessica was born, but Jessica could do the math. Her mother was (had been) forty-seven. Natsuhi said that she had been married to Krauss for thirty years. All that amounted to the fact that Jessica's mother had been crazy-young when she married her father, and given Natsuhi's equally crazy focus on being a good wife, she had probably (definitely) dropped out of high school in order to be a better wife to Jessica's father. Jessica felt like she owed it to her mother to finish high school, especially considering that Natsuhi hadn't had the chance.

So Jessica was going back to high school, and she found that she dreaded this day far more than the day when she first entered high school.

It had been difficult, walking Ange to her new school and waving goodbye to her at the door. Ange wasn't a whole lot more eager about this than Jessica; Jessica got the impression that her cousin was getting bored in her new house, but neither did Ange particularly want to go to school surrounded by strangers. She had stared at the white-painted building with a dubious look on her face, and gone in only with reluctance. Jessica thought she had the air of a tragic heroine from one of her books, going to her doom. It was all very melodramatic, but Jessica couldn't bring herself to laugh.

It was even more difficult for Jessica to enter the school that she was now attending. For the first time in her life, she felt anxious over wondering how she would be received by everyone else there. She had been pestered by a gaggle of reporters at the funeral, and had been glad to see that her grandfather's hometown looked pretty rural, so at least she wouldn't have to deal with that. But she'd known enough nosy people in high school to know that her new classmates could well be worse than the reporters; at least the police had had a reason for asking her all those questions, asides from having something new to gossip about.

But it was remarkably quiet. Jessica was given her new class schedule by her homeroom teacher, and introduced herself at the start of class. There had been a little bit of whispering when she introduced herself as "Ushiromiya Jessica" (news traveled fast), but nothing more than that. No one tried to ask her about her family, or about Rokkenjima; in fact, no one really talked to her at all. Jessica wondered if maybe her teachers had something to do with that.

At first, she was relieved. Nobody was hounding her here; she could sit and take notes in peace. There was a test in her lit class in a week, and she was expected to take it. Jessica was stunned by the comforting normality of feeling irritated at having to take a test.

Then, loneliness set in.

Jessica missed her friends. She had expected that, but she hadn't expected how oppressive isolation would feel once she went back to school. Never had she felt so transparent. Usually one of her teachers was calling her out for talking in class or passing notes, something that had pissed off her mom to no end. But here, there was no one to talk to or pass notes with. The sea of faces she was confronted with held nothing familiar.

Through lunch, she wondered how Ange was doing. Ange had been such a friendly, cheerful girl before. The Ange Jessica had known when they still had their family would have had no difficulty making friends. But Ange had become so withdrawn; Jessica was afraid that she might be having difficulties. By the end of the day, she was more than ready to head over to the elementary school to pick Ange up.

"Umm, you're Ushiromiya-san, aren't you?"

Three of the girls from Jessica's homeroom approached her when she went to her locker that afternoon. One was tall and slender, with long black hair and dark eyes. The other two were shorter. Both had brown hair. One had brown eyes; the other had green. All were looking at Jessica with expressions of tentative hope on their faces.

Jessica shoved the books she needed into her knapsack. She nodded, feeling stupid for feeling nervous. "Yeah, I am." She added a belated, "It's nice to meet you." The words felt forced, and she imagined the way Shannon would have said it, so much more smoothly and sweetly.

The green-eyed girl stepped forward, brushing her shoulder-length hair out of her face. "I'm Fukuda Hanako."

"I'm Katou Kinuyo," the tall girl said in a soft voice.

The third girl smiled winningly. "Takahashi Shiomi; nice to meet you, Ushiromiya-san."

"We… We're sorry about your family." Hanako took back the reins of the conversation. She seemed less certain now than before. "It… must be hard," she mumbled lamely. The other two girls looked away, as though afraid to make eye contact.

Suddenly, the air in the hall felt oppressive and stifling; Jessica had to fight to keep from tugging at her collar. "Yeah," Jessica said shortly. She frowned. What did these girls want, anyways? To express pity? Jessica had enough pride to balk at the idea of that. "It is."

Kinuyo fiddled with the strap of her bag. "Umm, we usually go to the coffee house after school." Her soft voice was slightly less faint, her expression still cautiously hopeful. Kinuyo's shrinking posture was painfully reminiscent of Shannon and Kanon, so reminiscent that Jessica was torn between wanting to look away and wanting to smile reassuringly at her so she wouldn't shrink. She shuffled her feet before going on. "Do you want to come with us?"

Jessica perked up. She hadn't been sure how she was going to make friends here; she had felt the loneliness of being without them like someone was digging into her skin with a white-hot knife. Standing before her were three potential friends, practically gift-wrapped.

No, that won't work.

Regretfully, Jessica shook her head, and when she smiled ruefully, it wasn't entirely a forced gesture. "Sorry, I can't. My grandfather's expecting me at home, and I've still gotta go pick up my cousin from school. I could ask my grandfather if it's okay for me to go with you guys tomorrow."

"We'll go with you to pick up your cousin," Shiomi offered, brightening.

"And it's okay if you want to bring her with you," Hanako added, smiling encouragingly. "The more, the merrier."

A grin rose to Jessica's lips almost before she realized it was there. "It's a deal."

As they walked down the street, Jessica's newly-acquired "escort" chatted comfortably about school, other friends, boyfriends (as well as girlfriends, in Hanako's case), and other things. They warned Jessica about the P.E. coach ("Look, he was probably only being nice to you because it was your first day and because of, well… Anyways, once he gets used to you he'll be laying into you just as much as he does the rest of us.") and about certain classmates who were bound to be unfriendly if she tried to approach them. She also learned about local cultural events, the schedule for local festivals, and about the spot just outside of town considered great for shooting off fireworks on New Year's Eve.

She felt slightly more normal than she had in weeks.

At the elementary school, that normal feeling evaporated when Jessica laid eyes on Ange. She was waiting inside on a bench, staring down at the ground, swinging one of her little legs back and forth. "Hey, Ange." Jessica put a hand on her shoulder. "Did you have a good day at school?" She hoped she didn't sound too much like Kyrie when she said that.

Ange shook her head sharply. "Nope."

"…You wanna talk about it?"

"No, Onee-chan."

Jessica fought the urge to grimace, then fought the urge to pry further. That didn't work with Ange. "Okay, then. Let's just go home." As they were walking out of the school, Jessica looked down at Ange with her brow furrowed. "Uh, listen, Ange. There are some girls out front from my school, and—"

Anything else she might have said was cut off by a loud shriek from Shiomi as the two of them stepped outside. Jessica gaped at the enraptured look on the other girl's face as she laid eyes on Ange (Who, for her part, promptly dived behind Jessica's legs). "Oh my God, you're so cute!" Shiomi squealed, grinning hugely. "You're the most adorable kid ever!"

"And to think you haven't even asked her name yet," Hanako muttered with a wry smile, while Kinuyo looked on in embarrassment and Ange continued to hide behind Jessica's legs. "Sorry," Hanako said to both Jessica and Ange. "Shiomi tends to go a bit overboard when she sees something she thinks is cute. She's completely harmless, though; don't worry."

"Uhh, sure," Jessica responded, eyebrow raised. Ange mumbled something that Jessica suspected was less than accepting, but she couldn't hear.

She had a friend in Niijima who reacted much the same way as Shiomi when she saw something cute. It was almost like being at home.

-0-0-0-

Jessica learned two things the next day. One, the coffee shop produced far better coffee than what Jessica expected of a non-chain establishment. Two, Ange did not like coffee at all and far preferred the fruity frozen drinks the coffee shop also produced.

Well, actually, she learned three things. The third that Ange absolutely could not be allowed to drink those frozen drinks if Jessica wanted to get her to go to sleep at anything resembling a decent time of night.

She learned something else as well. Her heart felt so much lighter when she had new friends to laugh with over even the smallest of things.

-0-0-0-

But at times, it still felt heavy.

The days were getting colder. They didn't yet possess the bitter seaside chill that Jessica had been used to, growing up on Rokkenjima, but she was wearing her jacket with the collar turned up in the mornings and making sure that Ange had her mittens. Jessica had never seen snow before, and didn't expect that this winter would be any different, but she did have to wonder what winters were like on the mainland. If they were anything like winters on Rokkenjima, cold and gloomy, she didn't think she'd like them.

Jessica wondered how her grandfather stood it. He barely seemed to notice the cold, even as his skin grew chapped from being outside while the wind blew on him fiercely. He would do his gardening, his pruning or whatever else needed to be done, while the wind tried to beat him down. It wasn't that he was actively resisting being chased away so much as he didn't seem to notice the wind or care about it at all. Watching him in such a situation did nothing to give Jessica a feeling of admiration or encourage her to stand strong against the wind, as so many people seemed to think such a display would. All it did was make her feel lonely.

One Saturday, after Jessica had finished her homework, she joined her grandfather in the garden as he pulled at weeds and dead plants, paring down on what was planted there in preparation for winter. Jessica had never weeded a garden before; her mother scolded her when she got grass stains on her clothes or dirt under her fingernails. Akihito showed her how with an air of calm, weathered patience, surely the product of raising children.

It wasn't all that hard, really. Jessica's grandfather had her pulling weeds while he pruned his bushes and cut off dead limbs as he found them; since she didn't know much about plants, it was for the best that Jessica just pulled the weeds. Sometimes, it was a bit hard for her to pull out the stubborn ones by the roots, but in that case all she had to do was dig a little bit, and they'd come out.

She kind of wished it would be harder work. If it was harder work, she'd be able to concentrate on it more, and her mind wouldn't slip to other things.

Jessica was wearing jeans. To most teenage girls, this wouldn't be something worth noting, but she had never worn long pants before her family died, only the short ones schoolgirls wore in gym class. Her mother never wore pants either. Natsuhi always said that they needed to treat their home like a public place, like a place of business, and that they needed to wear their best clothes whenever they ventured out of their private rooms. For Jessica, that meant wearing scratchy starched shirts and pretty, ladylike skirts.

"Jessica." Natsuhi's voice was tired, her forehead scrunched up like it always was right before she got a headache. "I know you don't like wearing clothes like this, but you must. We must uphold the dignity of the Ushiromiya family, even among our own relatives. It pleases your grandfather to see you uphold the dignity of our name. Won't you do this for him?"

She shook her head angrily, glaring at her mother. Jessica might have been seven, but she knew when her mom was trying to sweet-talk her. "It won't make Granddad happy!" she protested. "He's never happy, especially not with me! He won't even notice if I'm not wearing nice clothes!"

Natsuhi's face twisted and her expression grew hard. "Jessica, you will wear your nice clothes," she snapped. "You are a young lady and you need to act like one. That is the end of it."

At seven years old, Jessica had seen only her mother's frustration and short temper, and that had been all she could see for a very long time. Only when grief outweighed irritation could she see beyond that, to Natsuhi's anxiety and insecurity, and the way that affected how she behaved. Only when her mother was dead could Jessica see how sensitive her mother was to criticism, especially from Kinzo or Eva, and how the latter especially looked at Jessica's own behavior to draw material with which to needle at her sister-in-law. She wished she had been able to look past herself and her own feelings to see it before.

She had thought that, when she went to buy new clothes after her family's deaths, she would now feel perfectly free to where whatever she wanted, no matter how much her family wouldn't have approved of it. But the vast majority of the clothes Jessica picked out were the sort that her mother would have found no fault with, and this one pair of jeans she had bought, made her feel disrespectful and ungrateful to buy.

(It was oddly liberating, though, to be able to wear clothes that did not bear the crest of the One-Winged Eagle anywhere on them.)

At least I won't have to worry about getting these pants dirty.

Jessica remembered telling Kanon that he ought to live life to the fullest.

"What do you know about my life?" The question was asked in a tone, in a voice that Jessica did not expect, a voice that shocked her more than anything else could have.

She wasn't sure why she was remembering this now. She did know where the wave of guilt that washed over her came from.

"…Can I ask you a question?"

Her grandfather looked up abruptly from his pruning. So abrupt, in fact, that for a moment Jessica feared she would be snapped at as Kinzo would have done, if it had been him Jessica had drawn out of some reverie. But Akihito was not Kinzo, and though he seemed momentarily startled (as though no one had ever spoken to him while he pruned his plants before, which Jessica suspected might actually be the truth, or at least had been the truth for a long time), he nodded, giving her a look that seemed to be at the crossroads of sad and encouraging. "Of course, Jessica."

"Do you… Do we have any other family?" Jessica asked awkwardly, as she dropped the weeds she had just pulled up from the ground into a nearby wicker basket. She already knew that Natsuhi had had two brothers, but she wondered what else Akihito could tell her about them. She didn't meet her grandfather's eyes as she went on, "Mom never talked much about her life before she got married." She didn't know how Akihito would take hearing that. "I… was curious."

Akihito didn't answer her for a very long time. He knelt before a great bush, his back turned to Jessica, and she could not begin to guess the sorts of emotions that might have been passing over his lined face. "I have two sons," he finally said, very quietly. "Akio is older than your mother. Masayoshi is younger. They are both married; both are fathers. I am to understand that Akio has recently become a grandfather."

That was a terse explanation that on the surface told Jessica very little. On the other hand, she suspected that his terseness might tell her something else entirely, though she wasn't sure what, not yet. What it did, in the here and now, was spark curiosity in her. "Were they at the funeral?" she asked, and only after the words left Jessica's mouth did it occur to her that this might not have been the thing to say. She felt her face burn with mortification, felt a hard, hot lump form in her throat. "What I mean is—"

Still sitting with his back turned to her, Akihito raised one hand to silence her. "Your uncles were there." His voice was flat, possessed of the tone of one who might have been speaking of the weather or the particular shade of green the grass had taken.

"Oh." Jessica frowned, staring down at her feet. Despite her coat being thick and buttoned all the way up, she felt a little cold. The chill was seeping into her bones, she guessed. "Why didn't they…" 'Come speak to me', 'come say something about Mom', 'come introduce themselves, at least; we'd never met before, after all…'

Akihito sighed. "I'm sure they had their reasons," he said heavily.

They continued on for a few more minutes in silence, never speaking, until Jessica realized that she was done weeding everywhere except right next to where her grandfather was pruning. She picked up the basket and brought it over to that area, knelt down, and started looking around for anything that struck her as a weed growing up through the dirt.

For himself, Akihito let her do her work without interruption, at least for a while. When he pruned a bush, he would go over every branch, looking for something, anything that he thought needed to go. There were little piles of bits and pieces of branches by every bush. Jessica had watched Kanon sometimes when he pruned the rose bushes outside of the mansion on Rokkenjima. He had always seemed distracted, his mind somewhere else, anywhere else. There really was no comparison to the single-minded way her grandfather went about his tasks.

But Jessica felt like Kanon must have. Her mind was going to other places, and as much as she knew that this needed to be done, she couldn't put her heart into any of it. The cold slipped down the back of her neck, in the gap between her coat collar and her skin; she felt as though she had left her skin bare against the wind. Jessica was just noticing that the chill seemed to get to her more than it had in the past few years. Was it because she was living somewhere different now? Or was it something else?

"You play the guitar very well."

After the long minutes of silence, hearing him speak made Jessica jump, just a little. It should not have, and she longed for the days when hearing someone speak in her own home (because this was her home now; there was no avoiding that, where else could she go?), wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary. "Th-thank you."

It wasn't the first time he'd said as much to her. Jessica had heard these words from her grandfather's lips sometimes when he would come to the garden and find her playing there. She didn't mind being praised for her skill with the guitar, not normally; between having to hide it from her parents and her teachers (who might well have reported it to her parents), Jessica got precious little praise from anyone who wasn't a classmate. It just didn't feel the same, being praised by someone who was the same age as her or younger. All the same, he wasn't the one she had always longed to hear such praise from, and receiving praise in the face of the reality that Jessica would never get it from those she'd wanted it from, this brought her no joy.

Akihito's brow furrowed. "May I ask how you decided that you would learn to play?" He sounded oddly hesitant, as though he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer. For the life of her, Jessica couldn't understand why. "Did one of your parents suggest it to you?"

Jessica's back and shoulders stiffened. "Oh, well… No, no, they didn't." Her voice shook. "I learned to play starting in tenth grade; a friend suggested it to me. I… I never actually told my parents about it. I… I was always afraid they'd make me stop if they knew. I wish…" She trailed off.

There were tears in her eyes. Jessica noticed that at about the same time that she noticed that her cheeks were wet—the wind hitting the tears on her cheeks was especially bitter—and that her voice was cracking. Frankly, she wondered how much of what she'd said, her grandfather had even understood. It was strange that she was crying. She'd already thought about this a lot, and once the first round of crying had been concluded, Jessica had decided that feeling guilty over her guitar was really stupid and trivial when there were a ton of more important things she could feel guilty about.

And here she was, crying again, crying over that guitar when she'd told herself she wouldn't. She was being silly; that much she was able to register, even as her shoulders shook under the force of her sobs. Jessica felt silly, but that only made the tears fall down her cheeks faster, only made it hard to breathe. She felt silly, knew she was being silly. Surely her grandfather would think the same, and Jessica had cried in front of her relatives so rarely that she had no idea how he would react.

But he said nothing. There were no words with which he scolded her, none with which he mocked her, the way some of Jessica's other family members might have done. Instead, he leaned over and pulled her close, gingerly, as though Jessica was some fragile clay statue he was hugging instead of a human being. He wrapped his arms around her, patting her back gently, almost the way Jessica remembered watching Kyrie do with Ange when the latter was just a baby.

She cried into his shoulder until her throat was raw and her tears were spent, until she felt exhausted. But you know, oddly enough, Jessica felt better for it, lighter than she had in weeks.

-0-0-0-

The next day, she found Akihito in his study, or what Jessica supposed passed for a study in this house. Kinzo's study had been like a house unto itself; he would lurk in that chambered room for days on end without leaving, and Genji would be the only one who saw him in all that time, when he came to bring Kinzo his food, and later to take the empty plates back out. (Jessica had never said as much—she wasn't that stupid, okay—but she had liked those days the best.)

Jessica's living grandfather, so much milder a man than her dead one, was poring over some official-looking papers. She didn't look at the characters on the pages; she'd always been told not to do that when Krauss took his business papers into the parlor. He did not notice her, not at first (had she really come into the room so quietly?), so Jessica was forced to clear her throat, feeling immensely awkward as she did so.

He looked up, seeming surprised for once; Jessica had never actually seen him surprised before. Akihito put his pen aside and gazed at her with his brow furrowed. "Yes, Jessica?"

"Umm…" Jessica shuffled her feet as she dug around in her pocket for what she had brought to him. "…Mom… That day… She, well, she gave me this." Jessica held a small mirror, the spirit mirror that was supposed to have belonged to her great-grandfather, long ago. She said that she'd been given it by her grandfather just before she left home to get married; she said it was supposed to be some sort of old family heirloom, or something like that. I… I was wondering if maybe you'd want to have it back."

Giving the spirit mirror to her grandfather was not the same as giving it away; that was what Jessica told herself to ease whatever misgivings she might have felt. Thirty years ago, Natsuhi had taken it away with her when she left this house, and now, Jessica had brought it back. There was a sort of symmetry to that which she liked.

And it was also something that she could give, something she could give freely, when there was nothing else. Over the past few weeks, Jessica had only become more painfully aware of the lack of parity in this relationship. Taking in two orphaned children would be a burden on anyone, especially when it occurred to Jessica that her grandfather might not have been all that well off financially, at least not in comparison to the Ushiromiya family (Not that that would be difficult, at least on the face of it). Here was something that she could give her grandfather, when all she had done for the last few weeks was take. Even if it was only something that was to be returned into his hands after thirty years, Jessica wanted to be able to give him something.

Akihito stared at her in naked shock, and only looked at the mirror with greater shock. Jessica realized that he had never expected to see this mirror again, but there was something more to the emotions that twisted his lined face. She didn't think he would have stayed so silent so long, if it was just the shock of seeing an old family mirror again after thirty years.

He reached forwards and took the mirror from her as though it was the most precious thing he had ever held in his hands. "Thank you, Jessica." Jessica didn't think she was imagining how choked her grandfather's voice was.

Jessica smiled tentatively at him, and was surprised, but happy, when he smiled back.

Chapter Text

Furude Akihito was a man of many regrets, but taking in his granddaughter and her cousin would never be one of them.

He was indeed a man of many regrets. He regretted poor financial decisions in his youth that had led him to do something unthinkable. He regretted not keeping in closer contact with his kin in Hinamizawa until that branch of the Furude family was whittled down to a young girl whom her village's elders never would have permitted to leave. It would have been nice to have someone in his family to speak with, who would still speak with him, but it was not to be.

Sometimes, Akihito regretted that he was not as devout as he should have been, for the priest who kept the local Shinto shrine. Even when he had handed many of his duties over to his much-younger assistant (and hopefully, successor) since, frankly, he was not nearly as energetic as he once was, he regretted it. He regretted that there would be no one from his own family to take over the shrine when he was gone. It was his own fault, but he regretted it still.

At other times, Akihito suspected that if he was to write all of his regrets down on a slip of paper, fold it into the shape of a paper boat and send it sailing down the river, his regrets would all return to him anyways. When Natsuhi was little, she had had difficulties controlling her temper, and he had advised her to write down what made her angry in a diary and then shut the diary up when it was full and forget it. Akihito did not think that he could do the same with his regrets. There wasn't enough paper in the world for his greatest one, and even if he ever tried to forget it, his empty house would remind him.

But he would never regret taking in Jessica or Ange. True enough, there had been some problems with gaining custody of Ange, not that Akihito would ever let on as much to Jessica. Fortunately, Ange's Sumadera grandfather, whom Kyrie had named as Ange's guardian if something should happen to her and her husband, understood that Ange would not be safe if she stayed with her mother's family, and assisted him in the process of gaining custody over Ange. Along with her cousin, Ange was now quite the young heiress, her mother had been disinherited long ago, and the Sumadera family was renowned for its ruthlessness; all it would take was one "unfortunate accident", and they would come into all her wealth. When Sumadera Kasumi protested that she should have custody of her niece, Akihito doubted she was saying so out of charity.

And it would pose something of a financial burden, looking after them both. Both Jessica and Ange had health problems, though in the former's case it was something so manageable as asthma and in the latter's the doctors seemed to be of the opinion that she would grow out of it. Thanks to rather more sensible decisions on his part, Akihito was not in the same dire straits financially that he had been long ago, and Jessica was old enough to draw on her savings if she needed to, but…

No. Not, he would not worry about that. He would not think that way. Akihito had forced himself not to care about money a long time ago.

But having Jessica under his roof brought such memories to the surface of his mind. It seemed supremely ironic that it would be Natsuhi's child who was to be the only grandchild whose life he could be a part of. Jessica looked so much like Natsuhi had at that age, tall and long-limbed as she was. Her colorings, fair-haired and blue-eyed, belonged to someone else, and her facial features were somewhat softer in profile than Natsuhi's were as a teenager—Akihito remembered coming to his daughter's room one day to find her poring over her mirror, staring despairingly at her sharp nose. There were some differences, but Jessica looked so much like Natsui had at that age that it hurt, like someone slowly driving a thumbscrew into his flesh.

After a moment, Akihito realized that that wasn't right either. Jessica was older than Natsuhi had been when he sold her away.

Thirty years ago, Akihito had been in such desperate circumstances that he and his wife and children could barely afford to feed themselves. He was so deep in debt to the Ushiromiya family that if ever its patriarch Kinzo wished to call in his debts, Akihito would have lost everything. He and his family would have been out on the streets, begging for their bread. He simply could not afford to pay off his debts. Akihito had at the time still been relatively new to the world of finance, and in the present day, he sometimes wondered if Kinzo hadn't taken advantage of that. He wouldn't have been surprised, considering the offer that Ushiromiya Kinzo made to him.

"I notice that your daughter is of marrying age, and yet unmarried. As it happens, the same can be said of my eldest son. I will make you a proposal, Furude-san. If you agree to give your daughter to my family, to marry my son, I will consider this a reconciliation of your debts; I will let you keep your home and everything else that you offered up as collateral to me. She will be a member of my family. You will cut off all contact with her, and you will not presume upon your connection with my family."

"…"

"Well?"

Saying 'yes' should not have been as easy as it was. That pause when Akihito hesitated should have grown into a full-blown objection. He should not have cared that he would lose his home and nearly everything that he owned. He should not have cared more about that than giving his daughter away like she was just more of the collateral he had offered up in exchange for loans. He should not have sold Natsuhi away so easily. He should not have cared about money more than he cared about his daughter.

But he had. Akihito could remember now, all the things he had told himself. It was for the best. It was a small price to pay to keep from losing his home. Natsuhi would be going to live among a wealthy family that never endured the sort of financial difficulties that Natsuhi had—at least he did not have to worry now about her being secure in her married life. It would be better for all of them if he did this. It would be for the best.

Somehow, while he'd almost convinced himself of all this, Akihito hadn't found it in himself to tell her that.

Until the day that he died, even if his mind was filled with cobwebs and he could not remember how to find his way home, Akihito would never forget the way Natsuhi had looked as she was taken away. He had explained to her why things were to be the way that they were, but that did not stop her from having such a frightened, uncomprehending look in her eyes. The chauffeur sent to pick her up all but dragged her to the waiting car by the crook of her elbow, as though he expected her to run away if he did not do so—Natsuhi, who had never been so forcefully handled in all seventeen years of her life, stared wide-eyed at the chauffeur as though he might strike her next to make her move more quickly. She was ushered roughly into the car, and after that, Akihito never saw his daughter again.

His wife never forgave him for what he had done. Yuuna had been a quiet, gentle woman who never breathed a word of protest against her husband unless she had no other choice, and had given no protest when Natsuhi was bartered away, but Akihito did not think that she had ever forgiven him for giving their daughter away. She would stare longingly at the place at the kitchen table where Natsuhi sat to take meals with them. Akihito would go looking for his wife and find her sitting in Natsuhi's old room, bare as it was (there came a time before he was back on his feet when Akihito was forced to sell most of his children's possessions, those that had been left behind, to pay the bills; he'd felt horrible doing it, but they needed to be able to keep the electricity running), just sitting there, with a horribly blank expression on her face. As she was dying, Yuuna had expressed a wish to have her children at her bedside, and at that point, the daughter she'd not seen in nearly twenty-five years was at the forefront of her mind.

His sons, Natsuhi's older and younger brothers, had never forgiven him either. However, unlike their mother, they had made sure that he knew that they would never forgive him for giving their sister away.

"Are you joking?! She's our sister, your daughter, not a piece of furniture or a cow you can sell for some extra cash! You had no right! You're just making her do the work to pay off your debts!"

Akio and Masayoshi, aged twenty-one and fifteen respectively at the time, had stayed just long enough to see Natsuhi off, and then they had left. They had gone to live somewhere in Tokyo. Where in Tokyo, Akihito could not say, and Tokyo was so much like a planet unto itself that he would not have begun to know where to look. Their disgust with their father, who in their eyes had treated their sister like a belonging, a possession to be sold when money was scarce, was so great that they left their parents' home and never returned, never spoke to their father again. When they married, had children, when Akio's first grandchild was born, Akihito did not learn about until after the fact, in notes and cards sent to him by his daughters-in-law, terse letters with no return addresses.

But Akihito still told him that he had had to do this, that he'd had no other choice, that it was all for the best. For so long he told himself that incessantly, every day to stem the creeping flow of guilt into his heart. He told himself that his sons, his wife, they would all see in time, they would all see it the same way he had. They had to. Didn't they?

They didn't, and when his wife laid dying in the hospital, when his sons refused to even attend her wake and funeral because it would have meant interacting with him, when he was left alone with all his regrets, Akihito at last saw it the way they had.

In his youth, Akihito had known men who would sell their wives, their sisters or their daughters into prostitution to cover their debts. He had felt nothing but contempt and disgust for these men. They did not even have the fortitude to work their debts off themselves; instead, they forced their women-folk to do it for them, and in such a degrading way, too. How was what he'd done to Natsuhi any different? The title of 'wife' was certainly a far more respectable one than 'prostitute', but forced into marriage, into a family and a situation that she was not permitted to leave, that was little better than forced prostitution. The only difference was that Natsuhi was bound to one man, and not expected to serve the pleasures of many.

Akihito had counted all of his children as precious, but if he was honest with himself, Natsuhi had been especially precious to him. Natsuhi was the only one of his children to take an interest in the Shinto shrine Akihito served as priest of—he and his father had at one point hoped that they would be able to turn the shrine over to her when they could no longer maintain it. For all that her grades in school had never been better than average and she did not always have the easiest time controlling her temper, she had been a conscientious daughter, both at the shrine and at home. She had always strived to do what was right and do right by their family name. She had deserved better to be fobbed off to another family in exchange for a reconciliation of debts owed, like a cash payment or, indeed, like a piece of furniture or a cow.

He had no right. He had no right to force an innocent person, his daughter, to be a sacrifice, a hostage, to pay off his debts.

Furude Akihito had to live with his guilt, his shame, his regrets. He had to live with the fact that he had been so wrapped up in the idea that everything would be fine if he could just pay off his debts that he'd treated his own daughter as chattel to be sold the same way someone would sell extraneous pieces of furniture when they needed more money. He had to live with the fact that his wife had never forgiven him for this, and that Yuuna had gone to her grave unable to forgive him for what he'd done. He had to live with the fact that his sons would never forgive him, nor even consent to speak with him to entertain the idea of remorse and forgiveness. He had to live with the fact that he would never be a part of his grandchildren or great-grandchildren's lives, thanks to this.

And now, he had to live with the fact that his daughter was dead, and that she would never hear the words of shame and remorse. He had to live with the fact that Natsuhi would never hear his words to forgive him.

Perhaps it was because of this guilt, the fact that the one he longed the most to be forgiven by would never do so, for all time, that he had taken in Jessica when her family was killed. Perhaps it was because of this guilt that he had immediately agreed to help her get Ange away from her mother's family when she brought the matter up to him, pale-faced and nervous as she was. But he would never regret it.

Akihito knew that he could not be forgiven. He could not look to Natsuhi's daughter for forgiveness—he could not even bear to tell her the tale, for fear that she would be disgusted with him and reject him as his sons had done. But she had been sitting alone at her parents' funeral, frightened with no place to go, and she had looked so much like Natsuhi that he could not bring himself to walk away from her and leave her on her own. If he could not do right by Natsuhi, maybe he could at least do right by her daughter.

Maybe he was treating this like some sort of bid for redemption, after all. But Akihito knew, deep within himself, that he wouldn't find it.

-0-0-0-

Akihito wondered what Jessica and Ange had been like before they lost their family, and all of their respective fathers' relatives. He wondered if they had been cheerful girls, outgoing, with many friends and active social lives. He wondered if they had been happy, when their families were whole and they were not living in the home of a relation whom they had never met before their family's funeral.

He would have liked to have known them when they were happy. It had been so long since Akihito had lived under the same roof as someone who was happy, someone who was comfortable with themselves. The general contentment of his assistant at the shrine seemed unreal. That young man seemed so carefree that Akihito could barely believe it, but there were days when he wondered if this wasn't simply commonplace for the young, and that he himself had simply left contentment behind him long ago.

Jessica and Ange, as they were, certainly weren't content, not with themselves or with the circumstances they found themselves in. It had become Akihito's nature over the years to watch the world around him as it shifted and changed. This he did with his granddaughter and her cousin, hardly knowing what else to do, hardly knowing how to offer comfort.

At times they seemed dull and lifeless, like over-sized dolls left to gather dust and fade in the sun. They barely seemed to know what to do with their hands and feet. Jessica in particular would stare into space, her eyes huge and glassy. Akihito could discern no sadness in her face when she did this, but he could see no joy either, and there emanated from her an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Akihito, who knew helplessness well, could do nothing but pat her shoulder as he walked by, and occasionally Jessica would notice and try to engage him in conversation, but she would put on a veneer of chatty brightness that so loudly screamed of loneliness that Akihito could not help but be terse. She didn't try to talk to him much after the first few times.

There were times when Ange would not eat anything at meal times. From what Akihito gathered, the young girl did not enjoy a large appetite to start with. Jessica had insisted on helping him prepare the meals, and she at least had a good idea of what foods Ange liked and disliked, so that Ange could at least be encouraged to eat more, but there were days and nights when the child would simply refuse to eat anything at all. She would never say why, but her little face would darken like a storm cloud, and Jessica would only try to get her to eat for a little while before giving up, and the meal would be eaten by two, with one looking on and an intangible cloud of frustration hovering over the table.

Sometimes, Ange would sit down besides Jessica as the latter played the guitar in the garden and lean into her side. Sometimes Ange would go sit in the corner of the garden and cry into her hands. Sometimes Jessica would scream and strike the walls with her fists until her skin was torn and bloody and she collapsed into a wheezing heap.

All of this, Akihito noticed. He had become quite practiced at noticing others' discontentment and grief. He did not notice, not at first, when Jessica began to smile at him when they passed each other in a hall, and the way her smile was more subdued, but also more genuine. He did not at first notice the way Ange would hum little children's songs to herself while she did her homework. He didn't notice when Ange began to eat more and when Jessica would come home from school with a bounce in her step. Even when there came little moments that shocked him, he shrugged it off. He was out of practice with noticing genuine happiness, you see.

Then, one day, Jessica came to find him in his study. Ange was standing behind her legs, as she sometimes did. They wanted to know if they could do anything to help at the shrine. Ange wore the small frown that she used to cover up shyness. There was a brightness in Jessica's eyes that was painfully familiar, and not simply because it was the same brightness that had shined there when she produced the spirit mirror which his father had owned, and given to Natsuhi when she went to marry Kinzo's oldest son.

Perhaps there would never be redemption for him. There would be no redemption, and no forgiveness. But if Akihito could not have those things, perhaps he could have back the peace of mind and heart that he had once enjoyed. Perhaps that would be enough.