Years after finding the photograph, the mystery still remained and the Mistress' sanity seemed to be unraveling. Then again, so was Rei's, her fearful kindhearted browbeaten secretary, after years of abuse. By that point, childhood was coming to its close and adolescence was being born. Nui and I, while curious, were not as naive as before and, yet, it was a mystery as to how we remained sane through that turbulent time.
To some extent, with her losing her mind, we couldn't help but to silently relish the thought of her being carted away to an asylum. Said thought was also a nightmarish one, as we pictured her going away kicking and screaming, madly flailing her arms and screaming about how valuable she is or something of that sort. Either way, it will have been good riddance, as Nui had pointed out that being locked away is what she deserves, seeing as she's did lock someone away without any qualms and that she won't be able to hurt anyone again.
As the threads to her mind unraveled and as she started to fall further in various addictions, she started scapegoating her rage onto anyone or anything she saw. Rei learned to avoid her instinctively and we often took refuge in the attic, sometimes sleeping up there at night. Said incidents like that became common occurrence, however, what we didn't expect was for her wander the streets half-dressed or with panties around an ankle, shrieking loudly.
Once, one night, as I remember, she was begging, running about the house and streets begging for someone to stop haunting her. At first, I thought our father was haunting her, after all, he did leave and never return. I was to find myself wrong in that assumption for reasons only visceral. That night, the night of her begging, was the final nail in the coffin.
After that, she was placed in an institution, taking whatever secrets she had with her and leaving us in Rei's custody, orphans.
Sadly, that wasn't too last very long either. After about a couple to at least a few years, when Nui was thirteen and a half and I was nearing eighteen, we came home from school to EMTs pushing a gurney with a white cloth over it into an ambulance and police outside. Nui couldn't comprehend, yet I knew. Rei had ended her life, calling emergency services as she was dying.