Prologue - Junko and Nene
"So you're telling me they gave us both up?" said Junko in clear confusion and anger.
"No, that can't be right." Nene frowned. "I was born to my single mother, Ishii Yukio, on a flower farm out in the Japanese countryside on March 13th."
"Yeah," said Junko in frustration, leaning forward in her seat at the cafe in Karakura District, Tokyo, "and I was born to the Sato couple in the Japanese city of Sendai in the exact same year on February 7th. So tell me why neither of us looks like our families."
"We can't be twins. We don't even look like each other, and we were physically born to different people," Nene repeated stubbornly, as if determined to hold onto some semblance of sanity.
"I know. So why is our birth parentage and DNA structure the same, and why did we turn up in the same place looking for our real parents after finding adoption paperwork?" said Junko.
"Why would we need to be adopted?" said Nene, sitting back, bewildered. "Our mothers literally gave birth to us. It says so on our birth certificates."
"But our DNA structure doesn't match the DNA structure of the women who gave birth to us."
"That - that doesn't even make any sense!"
"You're ignoring the biggest point!" Others in the Karakura cafe were starting to stare. Nene was clearly frustrated, but Junko was the one who had pounded the table, stood, and pointed out the cafe window at the city sidewalk. "Why are we the only two people we've ever met who can see them?!"
Junko and Nene could both see, clear out the window, a floating, misty couple walking by holding hands, gazing lovingly into each other's eyes. Long metal chains dragged and clanked from each member of the couple's chests.
Everyone else could see, clear out the window, nothing. A blank sidewalk.
"But…" Nene looked down and whispered, almost afraid to break the spell of the moment. "... Why would our real parents still be here?"
Junko suddenly sat down, hard.
"I mean… the doctor and his wife our DNA says we came from… they disappeared from Karakura all those years ago, right?" Nene was frowning down at her hands. "... Where did they go? After supposedly giving birth to their first two children in us fourteen years ago, never having anymore, and then disappearing? … Why would they come back, or… still be here?"
Junko and Nene's stories had started separately - many, many years ago - two parallel timelines that had suddenly and unexpectedly converged.
They sat there in that moment, mirrors of each other across the cafe table:
Junko with coal black eyes, a pale, pointed elfin face, and jet-black hair.
Nene with warm chocolate brown eyes, a gently curving heart-shaped face, and soft cinnamon-colored hair.
From a distance, no one suspected family relation. Everyone thought friendship. Friends, surely.
But Sato Junko and Ishii Nene now knew that they were much more than that. That they shouldn't look at each other and see a stranger, even though the fact was that they did. As they drank each other in, morbidly fascinated, troubled, they each went back in time in their minds…