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It's a normal day for Iris. She's setting up an early morning stream and then she has the rest of the day off before she has to go in to Lemniscate tomorrow for some recording. She's brushing her hair in front of her mirror, squinting her eyes and trying very hard to visualize faces to match the voices that chatter in her head.
'You could dye it blue,' one of them suggests, and she very much knows why.
'Don't, you'd end up looking like that ugly hag,' the other offhandedly insults.
"Hey, don't insult Mame!" Iris scolds him, watching her own expression shift to a furrowed brow and a little frown.
'Iris, find Saito's body and strangle him,' Uru commands.
Iris tries for a split second to remember if Saito's body even had a neck anymore after he died, and then she quickly shakes her head to dispel that horrific mental image.
'I agree. Find my dead body and strangle it.'
'Why do you agree?!'
'Why? Does it piss you off?'
Her expression softens to more of a pout as she finishes with her hair and goes to her desk to finish setting up the stream, ignoring the boys to the best of her ability. She hums along to the music she had set to the "starting soon!" screen.
Saito is always unnecessarily violent, saying disturbing things on purpose to get a reaction out of Iris or, more frequently, out of Uru. She thinks he just gets bored easily and wants attention, but that doesn't mean she particularly likes him.
Uru, on the other hand, has a tendency to take genuine interest in the things Iris does, and the people she talks to. In particular, he has a strange fascination with Amame that Iris can only assume is a crush. He always finds reasons to talk about her and tries to get Iris to go see her all the time, and he acts different around her. Aside from that, though, he mostly just talks non-stop and offers a lot of unsolicited and unhelpful advice. Iris often calls him a backseater.
One thing he's extremely good at, which comes in handy today, is puzzle games. Iris does wish he'd wait until she actually got stuck to start giving her answers, but whenever there's a pattern, she gets him to explain how he got his first answer and then races with him to figure out the rest once she knows the formula. Saito tends to get in the way by telling random lies or getting Iris's fingers to twitch to screw up her input. The only reason he hasn't tried to move her hands yet by the time she has the stream going is because she's playing a new game with no save data for him to try to delete. It's a scary ability of his, but she's glad he can only really use it to be annoying and not to make her hurt anyone.
A few people in chat ask Iris how she solves the puzzles so quickly, one of them telling the others she probably has a guide up so she can stay on-schedule. A little playfully smug, she turns to the camera.
"Would you guys believe me if I said I'm being haunted by a ghost who was really good at puzzles?" she asks, and then she has to laugh. "He must have been a super genius while he was alive!"
'Why only when I was alive?'
'Well, you're dead...'
'Praise me more.'
'You're ugly.'
'You can't even see me.'
'You're ugly anyway.'
'Iris, Google Jin Furue.'
"I'm not Googling that..." Iris mutters to herself, out loud by accident. It's true that Saito probably wouldn't know what Jin, and by extension, Uru looked like, but she's seen enough of Jin to last her a lifetime.
'I'm sure your corpse was drop-dead gorgeous.'
'Iris, tell him to stop.'
Saito gets a real kick out of Uru asking Iris to control him, as if she's their mother, and Iris starts trying her very best to tune them out. When she comes across another puzzle, Uru immediately stops bickering with Saito.
"Okay, so the first answer was seven because you have to convert the letters to numbers and then subtract the ones place from the tens place, so this one should be..."
Iris carefully goes through the alphabet in her head, trying to do the math herself.
'5,' Uru chimes in with the answer rather quickly.
'He's wrong, it's 8.'
'Don't listen to him, it's 5.'
Iris thinks it'd be dangerous to just trust that Uru is always right, so she continues trying to do the math on her own, but focusing is impossible with two immature weirdos talking in her head at the same time.
"Let's try 5, then..." Iris decides, picking out the number from the onscreen keyboard the game prompts her with. A short cutscene plays of a door opening.
All in all, it's a completely average day for her; streaming an indie game that caught her attention because it was on sale, answering questions and comments in chat, and trying to tune out the two ghosts in her head.
The only time she can successfully override their voices is when she's listening to loud music, which is a good thing for her music career. She doesn't know what she'd do if every time she tried to sing, Saito started yelling or telling her to grab the mic and throw it against the wall or something. Uru isn't particularly malicious, but he just doesn't ever seem to stop talking.
When her stream is done, she gets a text from Ota asking her to come hang out for a little bit at Matsushita Diner.
'No, Amame never goes there,' Uru protests.
'I hate that little creature that runs the diner.'
'Stop it, don't call Ota a creature!'
'Why? He can't hear me.'
'Go to the place Amame always goes.'
'To hell, when I kill her.'
Iris instinctively covers her ears, as if that'll help muffle the impending screeching from Uru and Saito's cackling that follows. Saito thinks it's funny to threaten Amame as if he can actually do anything to her, and it's not like Uru doesn't know he can't hurt her, but he gets horrifically offended nonetheless.
He's calmed down by the time Iris gets to the diner, and then he's pestering her to ask Amame to play "that cooking game where you throw things" with her again, because "she laughed a lot last time". Iris can't afford to stay up late tonight, so she'll have to find an open spot in both of their schedules to hang out soon.
"Hey, Tesa?" Ota asks her, looking a little concerned. "I noticed you kind of... space out a lot lately. Everything alright?"
If she tells him she wasn't joking on stream earlier about being haunted, will he believe her? Well, it's Ota, after all; he tends to believe everything she says no matter what. She decides to put her faith in him and talks over Saito telling her to bite him.
"So... remember when we tried to use that Ouija board and I wanted to try to talk to like, a dead grandpa or something? I never told you, but I started hearing voices after that and now I have two dead weird guys talking to me in my head at all times, every day, and they won't go away, and one of them was the New Cyclops Killer and the other one is Tearer!" she blurts out all at once, taking a deep breath afterwards.
'Excellent, now he thinks you're insane,' Saito comments with a smirk Iris can just hear in his voice.
Ota takes a shocked moment to absorb all that information.
"Y... you mean that Saito guy who almost killed you and your mom is one of them?!" is Ota's first question-- not a matter of belief, just concern. Iris lets out a sigh of relief, which Ota loudly questions.
"Sorry, I'm pretty used to them by now. They're kind of like... my annoying little brothers, honestly. Except one of them has a crush on my friend and the other keeps deleting my save files," she casually explains.
'Don't... don't tell him...'
Since when is he shy?!
"Wait, which is even which?! Do they jump into your computer or something?!" Ota shouts, increasingly alarmed.
"Oh, Saito can make my fingers twitch sometimes, so he's the one who deletes stuff. But anyway, I never thought anyone would believe me..."
"We need to get you to an exorcist or something! Why are they even possessing you?!"
Iris never really thought about why, beyond it being a freak Ouija accident. She could understand Saito coming back to haunt her alone, but it's strange that he brought Uru along.
'You're the one who asked for dead relatives,' Saito tells her. 'Now you've got two big brothers.'
'But we're not even related...'
'I'm related to Saito by our father.'
"Huh?! Wait, really?!"
"Yes, really! You can't just live with two serial killers in your head, we've gotta get them out!" Ota insists, assuming she was talking to him. "I'm gonna look online to see if I can find a credible exorcist. Seriously, you should have told me sooner!"
Saito's father was So Sejima, Iris knows that much. All she really knows about Uru is what Mizuki has shared with her: that he had a horrific upbringing after being kidnapped from an orphanage, and that he was Tearer. Uru must have been a secret child that Sejima didn't intend to have.
It makes Iris start to think. She never did learn who her father was, and then after the New Cyclops Serial Killings, Sejima suddenly told Iris that she could always go to him if she ever had any problems. But why? She never understood it. Why would Sejima randomly decide to tell Iris she can rely on him?
'Did I not tell you?' Saito cuts through her thoughts. 'You look just like a woman I killed. A woman who had my father's baby even after he told her not to. So I figured, might as well get rid of her. Ever wonder why you look nothing like that Hitomi girl?'
'Wait, is Iris related to us?'
'Wow, I'm surrounded by geniuses,' Saito deadpans.
He has to be lying. But does he? Sejima's actions would suddenly make sense if he's her father.
"Sorry, Ota, I just remembered I have to go somewhere!" Iris shouts to him, running out the front door before he can try to stop her.
She runs until she's out of breath in an attempt to calm her nerves slightly and then calls a taxi to get her to Sejima's mansion.
'What's your plan here? Gonna tell him the ghost of his son and one of his many bastard kids told on him?' Saito asks her, sounding surprisingly bored considering the fact that he's the one who brought it up.
Honestly, she doesn't know. Maybe Sejima won't even give her a straight answer, just like he dodges the question whenever Iris tries to figure out why he goes out of his way for her. She thought that maybe he was secretly a fan, like Moma, but he never seems to know what she's talking about when she brings up her career, and he really doesn't act like a fan.
'Tell him he's a nuisance and needs to take more responsibility,' Uru commands. Iris is quite used to ignoring the random things he tells her to do by now, but if Saito's implications are true... she kind of wants to.
Then again, Uru saying that isn't exactly meant to be for Iris. If Sejima had decided to take care of Uru, he probably never would have been kidnapped, after all. It only makes sense to resent him for being the starting point of all his problems.
Actually, at least two of Sejima's kids have turned out to be serial killers now. Iris has to wonder if it's in the blood. Maybe her being so into the occult is a red flag. Maybe by the time she's 30, she'll start getting dark urges...
'Oh, please get them sooner than that,' Saito encourages.
To spite him, she pulls up ViewQube on her phone in the taxi and looks up "cute kitty videos" both to calm her nerves and also because she knows he gets unreasonably annoyed by it. Uru, surprisingly, has no comment when she watches videos like this. Maybe he likes them.
Even after watching cat videos on the way to Sejima's mansion, Iris still feels her nerves bundled up in her throat. She thanks the taxi driver, pays the fare, and tells him she shouldn't be long. He kindly offers to wait a while for her to return and Iris thanks him again with a short bow.
Her walk up to the mansion is slow and riddled with anxiety. When she reaches the pond in his garden, she stops on the bridge and takes a deep breath to steel herself. She runs the rest of the way to the mansion, announcing herself when she gets close. Sejima languidly acknowledges her from somewhere inside and shuffles past the closest door.
"To what do I owe this visit?" he asks with a smile.
Iris doesn't know how to say it.
'I'm home, old man.'
'You couldn't hide from me forever.'
She doesn't take either of their suggestions.
"Am... am I..."
Her hands clasp together nervously and making eye contact becomes difficult, but she needs to watch his expression in case he tries to lie.
"You're my father, aren't you?"
He doesn't react with surprise. His eyes don't widen-- no, they narrow.
"Who told you that?" is his question.
Can she just say it was the ghost of his son? There's no way he'll believe her.
"Who do you think?" she asks instead, sounding less nervous and more determined. She's making it clear she won't let him run away from this.
Eventually, he sighs.
"That damned Date," he gripes. "Why don't you come sit down?"
There's a long, tense silence while Sejima sees about making tea for the two of them. He's probably using that time to think about what to say. Maybe it'd be wise for Iris to do the same, but her head is swimming. Her ears are so full of fuzz that she barely even hears the ghosts chattering. The ghosts of her brothers.
"I can only be called your father in the biological sense anyway," Sejima tells her after sitting across from her. "It's certainly not like I ever raised you."
If he did, would she have been raised with Saito?
'You wouldn't have survived it,' he laughs. She believes him.
"I guess... you didn't want me to know so I wouldn't try to make you take responsibility?" she assumes with no small hint of bitterness. Sejima takes a long moment to sip his tea.
"For a long time, I didn't know. I knew Manaka had given birth before... before what happened, but I had no idea what became of you after that. I only found out you were hers when that man Date told me."
"Manaka..?"
The confirmation that her mother isn't her birth mother comes as a dull sting. She'll always see Hitomi as her mother, but it hurts a little to be kept in the dark for so long.
"Yes, that was her name. Come to think of it, you really are the spitting image of her," he says.
Now the way he looks at her makes sense. She never knew how to interpret it, finding it strangely forlorn. Maybe it's guilt and a long-buried fondness.
She understands, too, why Sejima didn't tell her if he didn't know for so long. Him suddenly barging into her life claiming to be her father as if he's ever done a thing for her would be awkward at best. Even vaguely offering to help her if she ever needs it is more than she would have expected from him. Maybe he wanted her to figure it out on her own, so he wouldn't have to find the audacity to say it.
"What was my mom like..?" she asks, though it feels a bit like she's betraying Hitomi to say it.
"Kind, gentle. Would put her foot down over the most random things. She often forgot specific terms and would make something up on the spot to represent whatever she was trying to talk about..."
His smile looks genuine, if a little sad. Saito pretends to snore.
'Ask him what he plans to do now that you know.'
It's rare that Iris actually follows one of Uru's many suggestions, but his constant chatter is bound to end up revealing some good ideas occasionally. She asks him, and her nerves begin to press in on themselves again, tightening in anticipation of a negative response.
"What, exactly, can I do? I already told you you can come to me if you're ever in trouble. There's not much else I can do for you," he says.
It's an anticlimactic answer, but it's one that makes her breath come easier. She wants to ask him something else now, almost addresses him, but she thinks twice about how she should be referring to him. Would "dad" be acceptable in any capacity? Does she even want to call him that? But it's weird to call a parent by their name. She chooses to avoid referring to him at all instead.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" she asks. Sejima must think it's out of nowhere.
"What's this about? There's no such thing as ghosts," he says.
'Don't you wish that were true?'
'Could you guys go haunt him now instead of me...'
'I don't know how to leave,' Uru admits, not for the first time. Saito has said before that he wants to stay and torment Iris, but he probably can't leave, either.
She realizes now that she sort of left Sejima hanging.
"Oh, just... if you could commune with the dead, what would you do?"
He looks like he has a lot of answers swirling about in his head.
"Hm. Nothing in particular, I guess," he says, but she knows it's a lie. Maybe he'd apologize. He'd probably have an extensive list of people to go through, in that case-- much more than Iris is even aware of.
"I think... if you have any other kids, maybe you should start trying to find them. I guess I can't force you to be a part of their lives, but..."
Iris thinks about how many times she wished she had a sibling as a kid.
"I'd like to get to know them, at least," she finishes quietly.
Sejima slowly nods. Though a little solemn, it feels like a victory for Iris. She finishes her tea and stands up, and then hesitates for a moment, unsure of how she should be acting in front of him. She ends up bowing awkwardly and thanking him for seeing her before leaving, and he walks her up to the front gate in awkward silence.
'Now that we're done with that, you should go see Amame.'
Suddenly, it's back to the regular routine. If this exorcism Ota is planning doesn't work, she'll have to find a way to get along with her brothers.