Nanaya wished that everyone didn't always look so sad and wistful around her. They were the best family anyone could have asked for - always loving, always supportive - but sometimes she caught them giving her such sad, sad looks whenever they thought she wasn't looking.

She knew why, sort of. It definitely had something to do with the old her. The other her, rather. Or, really, not her at all. She didn't really know enough about Kohaku to know what exactly it was, though. She knew that Kohaku was Hisui's sister, that she loved Shiki, and that she was always at Akiha's side, but not really anything else. No one liked talking about her.

It was not fair, she thought, the fact that the things Kohaku did and the things Kohaku was colour people's perceptions of her. She understood that they couldn't really help it, but still. She figured that that was probably why she liked being around Arihiko and Akira so much – they had never known Kohaku, so they only ever saw Nanaya.

"Eh. Shiki's an idiot. Don't let it bother you."

She brought it up to them once, on one of the rare occasions it was just the three of them hanging out, without Shiki around.

"Uh, but Arihiko, it's not just Shiki, is it?

"Okay, so Akiha and Hisui are idiots too. Whatever."

Nanaya laughed at that.

"Careful not to let Akiha hear you say that! I don't think you'd survive."

"Yeah, no. Akiha is scary."

"Aw, c'mon. A girl that cute can't be that bad, right?"

Nanaya and Akira looked at each other.

"Oh yes, she can," they said as one.

After that they'd gotten embroiled in a long discussion of how terrifying Akiha could be.

It might have went straight off of the rails pretty quickly, but the conversation helped a lot. Certainly it made Nanaya feel much better about things.

Still, there was a curiosity burning deep inside of her. Even if she wasn't going to let the odd looks bother her anymore, she still wanted to know more about Kohaku.

She figured she wouldn't get any straight answers if she asked outright, so instead she decided she was first going to comb the mansion for whatever traces of Kohaku were left. Obviously, there was Kohaku's room, and that told her a lot (for instance, that Kohaku liked video games, just like Nanaya, and that Kohaku couldn't keep a room clean to save her life) but not the things she wanted to know, so she kept looking.

It was an entire week later when she found the diary. A little thing, hidden away in a locked-up room no one had entered in what must have been years. She knew it had belonged to Kohaku, somehow. Some trace memory, perhaps. There wasn't much in the book, just a few words written in a childish scrawl, but it told Nanaya so very much.

"Help me. Help me. helpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelp me. I should just become a doll."