It's happening all over again.
A little girl, alone; her loved ones have been torn away from her, petals from a flower. He loves me, she loves me, he loves me, he loves me, she loves me…one by one, yanked from their yellow center, because it doesn't matter if the answer is yes or no when greedy fingers come plucking.
And so, adrift in an ocean of fear, she clings to the first thing that comes floating by: a business card, two inches by three inches, one corner slightly bent, printed with the name: Takatsuki Sen. She dials the number with trembling fingers and a palpitating heart. The voice on the other end is cheery, excited—she's been expecting a call—she'd love to meet! Can't the older woman hear the sorrow in the younger girl's voice? Maybe she's been expecting that, too.
Human children learn about the life cycle of a butterfly in grade school, marveling at the magic that transforms eggs to caterpillars, to pupas, to adults. Metamorphosis. Hinami's metamorphosis began with that phone call, but hers was in reverse—from something beautiful and joyous and resplendent into something ugly, unwanted—a pest.
On second thought, perhaps her metamorphosis began before that, when her adoptive brother left to fight a battle he knew he could not win, or the day the last piece of her father was used as a weapon to slaughter her mother, blood spilled in a cloudburst. She, helpless to change any of it. No. That's not right either. Hinami's metamorphosis began the moment she was born, released from the safe darkness of the womb into the light of a twisted, wrong world, a world in which being loved makes one powerless to protect the very people who love you, where strength can come only from loss, where silver briefcases open with a click and lives close just as quickly.
One can understand how, under such circumstances, a girl of fourteen would try to protect herself, escape, retreat—into a cocoon. Maybe when she emerges the world will be right again.
She, however, will not.