She only saw him once a year, but You was still Ayako's favourite person. He was never too busy or distracted for her during his visits; he never told her she couldn't have this or do that. When he was visiting he brought presents and told interesting stories and took her round the island, pointing out things that were so familiar Ayako had never noticed them before; and when he was away on the mainland he sent parcels addressed to Ayako by name, which contained long letters, books, dolls, sweets and anything else he thought she might like. You's presents were always the best; everyone else assumed she was too young to be interested in medicine, but You sent her a hardback book of anatomy, with big red illustrations of people who'd had their skin peeled off, or their stomachs or skulls laid open. It was Ayako's most treasured possession.

The year she was nine, his visit came on a good week, one of those rare times when mother didn't have to be in the hospital. Ayako remembered a time when nearly every week had been a good week, but they were becoming few and far between now, and she always hoped there would be one to coincide with You's visit. It was hard to be really happy when mother was in the hospital, and Ayako thought You was quieter and less cheerful at those times, too.

They met him at the jetty; as usual, Ayako had been impatient to be there two hours before his ferry was due to arrive, tiring her mother and grandfather out with her excitement. She liked to watch for the ferry appearing out of the haze, and see, as it grew closer, that You was first in line to disembark, as he always was. She waved until her arms hurt, and as soon as the ferry docked, ran out onto the wooden pier so he could pick her up and carry her back, which he still did, even though he always said that next time she'd be too big for that.

It was a warm day, the air still and mild even on the beach, and You's bags were not heavy, so they decided to walk back to the Haibara house together, rather than waiting for the bus that made a circuit of the island once every hour.

Ayako claimed You's free hand as they walked along and listened to him talk. Even the things he said to grandfather seemed so much more interesting than what anyone else said, and most of the time he talked to Ayako, which was even better. He told her stories about all the people who came to his clinic, including one man who believed his neighbour was sucking the thoughts out of his head by means of a special pipe. Ayako thought this hilarious, though her mother said reproachfully that the man couldn't help it, and Ayako ought to feel compassion for him.

When they got to the inland path, where only two could walk abreast, Ayako took advantage of the fact that her mother and grandfather were too far away to hear.

"Why can't you come and live with us?" she asked You in a low voice. It was something of a sore point.

"Because I have to look after the Tokyo clinic," he said, "and there aren't any spaces for more doctors at the hospital here."

Ayako frowned. "But Dr. Nori is getting really old. Maybe we could make him retire so you could move here."

You raised his eyebrows. "Father?" he called ahead. "How old is Dr. Nori now?"

"Thirty-seven next month," her grandfather called back. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason." You gave Ayako a sardonic look that she loved, returning to the lower tones of a private conversation. "I'm afraid thirty-seven isn't old enough to retire."

"Maybe he could get ill and have to stop working."

You smiled sideways. "Very well. I'll ask Dr. Nori to get ill. What should he contract, do you think?"

Ayako considered, picking leaves from a bush they were passing as she did. "Ebola," she said.

"Medically interesting, but very rare, especially in Japan."

"Tuberculosis."

"I believe he's been vaccinated."

She bit her lip, thinking. "Syphilis."

You looked vastly amused. "Do you know what syphilis is, Ayako?"

"Is it that thing where your brain swells up?"

"That's encephalitis."

"Oh. Well, can he get that?"

"Perhaps. I'm sure he'd try if your grandfather instructed him to. In the meantime, though, I'd probably better stay on the mainland."

Ayako sighed, swiping at low-hanging tree branches with a stick she'd found. "I wish you could just come and live with us anyway." Then she brightened. "Ebola's the one where you bleed out of your fingernails, isn't it?" She could ask him that; she could ask him all the things mother thought she shouldn't know and grandfather thought she shouldn't be saying aloud. He told her everything.

They ate together at the house, and as evening came on, You went outside with Ayako's mother to look at the garden. Ayako was summoned to help clear the table, but once she'd finished she ran to the screen-door that led out into the garden courtyard. There, she paused.

Her mother and You were standing side-by-side in the twilight, and their heads were very close together, and Ayako thought they might be holding hands. That was new, and although she'd seen people doing much weirder things, something about the scene made her reluctant to interrupt.

"The symptoms wouldn't go away completely," You was saying, "but they would certainly abate; I've seen it happen dozens of times."

"But you wouldn't really want me living with you," her mother said, and although mother was always a gentle, soft-spoken person, Ayako had never heard this kind of softness in her voice before. "It wouldn't be comfortable, after all these years. And Ayako..."

Ayako stood frozen. Mother was talking about going to live with You! You was actually inviting her to do it!

"After all these years?" You sounded incredulous. "What is it you think the years have changed, Sakuya? Because – "

"But I couldn't leave," she interrupted, so softly, almost mournfully. "Not now, not now. I'm too – "

"I want to!" Ayako cried from the doorway, unable to restrain herself any longer. "I want to go and live with You!"

The pair in the garden sprang away from each other, turning quickly, as if they'd been caught doing something wrong. Her mother recovered first. "You was only being silly," she said. "We couldn't possibly go and live with him. There's no space for us in his flat."

Ayako knew a flimsy excuse when she heard one, but was confused to see them both looking so guilty.

"You mustn't mention this to grandfather, all right?" her mother went on, looking anxious. "You was only joking."

You didn't look as if he'd been joking. He had his arms folded and his head down. Ayako thought he looked unhappy.

"But I want to," Ayako said. "He could get a new house. I could be his assistant in the clinic so he wouldn't have to pay the other one. I want to go and live on the mainland..."

"It's true, I could get a new house," You said. "If the two of you came to live with me – "

"That's enough," her mother said, an unaccustomed sharpness creeping into her voice. "It isn't possible, so stop talking about it. Come on, Ayako, let's go and look at your new toys."

But Ayako didn't feel like playing, and while she sulkily made her dolls do bland things, like hold tea-parties and explore the cupboards, her mother sat there looking as if she wanted to cry. You was in the study with grandfather, talking about business and finances; Ayako would have listened even to that, but the door was locked.

Her mother went to bed early, and Ayako was left by herself, still boiling with frustrated incomprehension. She took her new sewing kit and the prettiest of the new dolls – a stuffed one with yellowish eyes like hers and straight black hair like hers – and carried them over to the bed.

She decided it was a mad doll. It did things nobody else could understand, and it didn't get to do what it really wanted, so it chopped itself up to be prettier. She got the small pair of scissors from the sewing kit. There. Now it had only one arm. The other elbow was a stump, oozing stuffing as soft as bundles of cloud. Pretty, pretty. Ayako crooned softly in her throat.

Next she stuck needles through its remaining hands and feet (pretty, pretty), shredded its long lacy skirt, and took the spool of red thread, winding it round and round the doll until it was caught in a red net, its white cloth face bulging against red lines. She hung it upside-down in the wardrobe; she would have liked to hang it from the ceiling, but she knew what mother and grandfather would say if they saw what she'd done to her nice new doll.

Pretty, pretty.

The sense of something boiling in her was gone. She put her sewing kit away neatly, crept into bed, and closed her eyes.


It was late that night when Sakuya tapped on You's door, but he wasn't asleep. He let her in and turned the lock behind her, and she perched on the end of his bed, conscious of the way this nightgown left her arms and shoulders bare.

"I'm afraid all the time now," she said frankly, without preamble. "Sometimes when I'm in the hospital for a long time, I forget I have a daughter. She runs up to me and I don't know who she is. Sometimes I forget my own name. I only remember who I am because I can look around and see the things I grew up with. They remind me."

You was shaking his head. "All the patients I've talked to think that, but it isn't true. They lose their minds because they think their memories are somewhere outside them – in the moon, or in a doll, or wherever. That doesn't slow the sickness down, it only makes them feel better."

"Maybe," Sakuya said. "But I need to feel better, even if it's just a feeling. You don't know how frightening it is." She twisted her hands in her lap. "You know, the lunar eclipse is coming up. Father thinks he knows a way to make me better. He and Souya Yomotsuki are working on it."

"The Kagura? That's just tourist rubbish."

"No, the older one. The Kiraigou."

"Do you really think it will work?"

"We'll find out in three years. Can you wait?"

"Three years?" He gave a hollow laugh. "It feels like I've ben waiting three years since I was fifteen."

Sakuya didn't understand. He was talking about something that she'd forgotten.

You recognised the look on her face. "Sorry. It's nothing. Don't worry about it." He stretched out on the bed and put an arm over his face. "I'm just tired of waiting. I want it to be over."

Her whole body thrumming with nerves, she lay down alongside him, laying her hand on his chest. She felt him grow tense; she could see the pulse fluttering just below his jaw. It had been years since she'd been this close to him.

The last time they'd been alone, and she'd wanted him to go to her, he'd walked out of the room instead, and for years she'd wondered and worried about what that meant. Did he blame her for what had happened between them? Did he think that she, as his elder sister, had taken advantage of him in some way? God forbid, had she? It had been that fear, as much as the onset of her illness, that had kept her on the island when she might have gone with him. But he said nothing had changed...

It had done her heart good to hear him say he was still hoping, still waiting. It gave her the courage to put her arm around him and lie close against his side, her forehead resting against his temple.

"Soon," he said, so hesitantly it was almost a question.

"Now," she said, and kissed him.


You was there three days after that. He didn't care if his father knew about Sakuya's visits to his room each night; nothing was said, either way, so he supposed it didn't matter.

Over the years, he had resigned himself to the idea that they'd never be together, but now the old dreams were reawakening. There would be house – it didn't matter where – small, but pleasant, perhaps with a garden or a greenhouse for Sakuya, and a little room for Ayako. Guests might visit, even his father.

You could no longer hate his father – they were too similar – but he did blame him for the years which had been lost. Even with the sickness, he and Sakuya might have had some of that time together, if his father had allowed it.

But they still might. Another three years... well, it felt as though he'd been waiting nearly all his life. He could wait a little longer.

They came to see him off at the jetty again. "I wish I could come with you," Ayako whispered fiercely in his ear when he knelt down for his goodbye hug. "Maybe someday soon," he whispered back. Before she let him go, he felt her slip something into his jacket pocket, but pretended not to notice; she must have wanted it to be a surprise, whatever it was, if she hadn't just given it to him.

To Sakuya, he didn't need to say anything. The summer sun made her hair shine like lacquer, and her eyes were clear; she looked like any confident young woman. But for all that, he thought, the were no mirrors in the Haibara house any longer, and from what his father said, her stays in the hospital were getting longer. They were building a special room for her, large and luxurious and kept apart from the other patients, and when work was complete, his father said, she would probably move there permanently.

But there was the Kiraigou to hope for. He wondered when, or if, his father would tell him about that.

"We didn't get a chance this time," Shigeto said, as if reading You's mind, "but next time you visit, I'd like us to get together with Souya Yomotsuki. He's working on something I think you'll be interested in."

"I'll look forward to it," You said, and glanced at Sakuya, giving the words another meaning for her. She smiled.

The gangway rocked against the planks as he crossed it to the ferry, and water slapped against the side of the boat. It was an evocative sound, the sound of a journey beginning, or an exile. Soon he might be hearing it for the last time, taking Sakuya away from here or coming back to stay for good. Three years, he thought again, three years. That phrase was like a tide in his life, always coming back, bringing new hopes.

When land was out of sight, he reached into his pocket to see what Ayako had put there. He expected a piece of paper, with a note or a drawing; instead his fingers met bunched-up cloth. He drew out the doll's arm and looked at it, half-curious, half-amused.

It had been cut off at the elbow and was haemorrhaging while stuffing, but she had applied a web of crimson thread as a tourniquet. At the stump, the red became a thick band, squeezing so that no more stuffing could escape. It was finished off with a neat, even bow, as pretty as anything Sakuya might have done.

All at once, he remembered a conversation with his father, from years ago. Ayako had been only about five, but still Shigeto had sighed and said, "She looks like Sakuya, but underneath she's yours, through and through."

You held the little token up to the sunlight; it twirled in lazy circles, red and white, red and white. Smiling, he put it back in his pocket. Not only mine, father. Some things just ran in the blood.