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Dream-eater
They'd moved to a new apartment, one of the shiny highrises on the edge of Ikebukuro, two bedroom, one bath, a larger kitchen than their old one. The apartment complex had a pool and a workout room. Hokuto had liked it because it was gated, with an intercom system and a guard at the front desk, who more often than not was asleep when Subaru came home from work, but he didn't mention that to her. He had liked it because it was different, it was new, and new places were not heavy with the dust of memories.
Hokuto kept the apartment very clean. She'd dropped out of school the year after the incident, got a part time job at the local convenience store, began taking classes at a hairdressing place. Subaru had always known she had a flair for things like that, but she turned out to be more than decent and was making good grades. He was proud of her. He would show up to the parent-teacher conferences in place of the parent, and at first he thought the teachers would ask questions, but no one asked. Instead, they confided in him of Hokuto's creativity, her precision and precise detail, her intent concentration. They asked him what they could do to make her speak more in class.
"My sister went through a traumatic experience two years ago," he would say to them, "and I'm sure it's just a matter of time. She's doing quite well under the circumstances, I think."
The teachers would nod and say of course, thank you so much for coming. The younger ones would blush and show him to the front door, the older ones would eye him with the look of a mother looking for someone to tuck under her wing. He wondered if they looked at Hokuto the same way, though two years of nightmares and the trial of going on living had changed them so that they no longer looked as much alike as they had before.
Even Seishirou had sometimes not been able to tell them apart back then.
He went alone to the grave sometimes to pay his respects. He would never have asked Hokuto to go with him, even if there had been the slightest possibility she would have said yes. Instead, he would leave her, silent and withdrawn, curled up by the window staring out at the apartment complex pool, took the elevator down to the ground floor, hailed a cab, walked through the concrete wilderness of the tiered cemetery to the simple grave.
Sakurazuka Seishirou, it read. No flowery inscription. No dates.
The sakura trees in that part of Ueno Park had been chopped down half a year after his death to make room for some new expansion of the museum. Subaru had half expected to hear an uproar, headlines in the newspaper or television about the skeletons that had been dug up with them, but of course there was nothing. Seishirou would not have been so careless. The last of the clan had taken his secrets to the grave.
Subaru had dropped out of school as well to work full time. He was famous in some circles, infamous in others, and he took it all in stride. Two years ago he would have lain awake at night worrying about his reputation, about what some people were saying behind his back, angsted himself to death that he wasn't doing the family name justice, that he would never be good enough. He would have had Hokuto come running to turn on the light and smooth his hair and make him a cup of tea, or hot chocolate, and pat him back into sleep. He would have had a long talk with Seishirou and it would have made him feel better.
Now, he was polite but distant, amicable but withdrawn, and he walked through the halls of the temples like he owned them, because he did. He was often approached with offers of partnership, and he turned them all down. No thank you, he would tell them with a polite smile that he knew did not reach his eyes, because he had almost forgotten how a true smile felt. I work alone.
The cases he took were increasingly obscure: two months ago it had been a young mother who claimed to see dead flowers littering the rooms of her home. The month after that, three siblings, mute since birth, who had suddenly began speaking only one word over and over again. Trees, they would whisper incessantly. Trees. Trees.
This month there had been no cases, because none had come up that were sufficiently interesting. He helped Hokuto with her schoolwork when he was able, the subject of a myriad different hairstyles and wardrobe makeovers, at first reminiscent of two years ago when she had been bright, bubbly, pink sparkles and glittery satin. As the year drew on, they became wilder, gothic, odd shapes that looked like sharp shadows and fluttering trails of weeping lace.
Lately, she had stopped experimenting on him. When he asked her why, she told him simply that she was saving up her money for a special project.
One morning he woke later than usual, feeling the house empty and thinking she had left for school. He went to the kitchen to fix a piece of toast and butter, poured himself a cup of cold tea from the kettle on the stove. He noticed her bookbag sitting on the chair by the door and thought it odd.
Turning on the television, he saw that there was a mild uproar, a breaking news bulletin about a murder, a body found in the park this morning. The screen showed several ambulances, police cars, the bare branches of sakura trees in the winter, black and stark above the concrete walkways of Ueno Park. The camera zoomed in on a stretcher covered by a sheet, under which he could just see the faint outline of a human corpse and a dangling, white-gloved hand.