Furude Akihito was a man of many regrets, but taking in his granddaughter and her cousin would never be one of them.

He was indeed a man of many regrets. He regretted poor financial decisions in his youth that had led him to do something unthinkable. He regretted not keeping in closer contact with his kin in Hinamizawa until that branch of the Furude family was whittled down to a young girl whom her village's elders never would have permitted to leave. It would have been nice to have someone in his family to speak with, who would still speak with him, but it was not to be.

Sometimes, Akihito regretted that he was not as devout as he should have been, for the priest who kept the local Shinto shrine. Even when he had handed many of his duties over to his much-younger assistant (and hopefully, successor) since, frankly, he was not nearly as energetic as he once was, he regretted it. He regretted that there would be no one from his own family to take over the shrine when he was gone. It was his own fault, but he regretted it still.

At other times, Akihito suspected that if he was to write all of his regrets down on a slip of paper, fold it into the shape of a paper boat and send it sailing down the river, his regrets would all return to him anyways. When Natsuhi was little, she had had difficulties controlling her temper, and he had advised her to write down what made her angry in a diary and then shut the diary up when it was full and forget it. Akihito did not think that he could do the same with his regrets. There wasn't enough paper in the world for his greatest one, and even if he ever tried to forget it, his empty house would remind him.

But he would never regret taking in Jessica or Ange. True enough, there had been some problems with gaining custody of Ange, not that Akihito would ever let on as much to Jessica. Fortunately, Ange's Sumadera grandfather, whom Kyrie had named as Ange's guardian if something should happen to her and her husband, understood that Ange would not be safe if she stayed with her mother's family, and assisted him in the process of gaining custody over Ange. Along with her cousin, Ange was now quite the young heiress, her mother had been disinherited long ago, and the Sumadera family was renowned for its ruthlessness; all it would take was one "unfortunate accident", and they would come into all her wealth. When Sumadera Kasumi protested that she should have custody of her niece, Akihito doubted she was saying so out of charity.

And it would pose something of a financial burden, looking after them both. Both Jessica and Ange had health problems, though in the former's case it was something so manageable as asthma and in the latter's the doctors seemed to be of the opinion that she would grow out of it. Thanks to rather more sensible decisions on his part, Akihito was not in the same dire straits financially that he had been long ago, and Jessica was old enough to draw on her savings if she needed to, but…

No. Not, he would not worry about that. He would not think that way. Akihito had forced himself not to care about money a long time ago.

But having Jessica under his roof brought such memories to the surface of his mind. It seemed supremely ironic that it would be Natsuhi's child who was to be the only grandchild whose life he could be a part of. Jessica looked so much like Natsuhi had at that age, tall and long-limbed as she was. Her colorings, fair-haired and blue-eyed, belonged to someone else, and her facial features were somewhat softer in profile than Natsuhi's were as a teenager—Akihito remembered coming to his daughter's room one day to find her poring over her mirror, staring despairingly at her sharp nose. There were some differences, but Jessica looked so much like Natsui had at that age that it hurt, like someone slowly driving a thumbscrew into his flesh.

After a moment, Akihito realized that that wasn't right either. Jessica was older than Natsuhi had been when he sold her away.

Thirty years ago, Akihito had been in such desperate circumstances that he and his wife and children could barely afford to feed themselves. He was so deep in debt to the Ushiromiya family that if ever its patriarch Kinzo wished to call in his debts, Akihito would have lost everything. He and his family would have been out on the streets, begging for their bread. He simply could not afford to pay off his debts. Akihito had at the time still been relatively new to the world of finance, and in the present day, he sometimes wondered if Kinzo hadn't taken advantage of that. He wouldn't have been surprised, considering the offer that Ushiromiya Kinzo made to him.

"I notice that your daughter is of marrying age, and yet unmarried. As it happens, the same can be said of my eldest son. I will make you a proposal, Furude-san. If you agree to give your daughter to my family, to marry my son, I will consider this a reconciliation of your debts; I will let you keep your home and everything else that you offered up as collateral to me. She will be a member of my family. You will cut off all contact with her, and you will not presume upon your connection with my family."

"…"

"Well?"

Saying 'yes' should not have been as easy as it was. That pause when Akihito hesitated should have grown into a full-blown objection. He should not have cared that he would lose his home and nearly everything that he owned. He should not have cared more about that than giving his daughter away like she was just more of the collateral he had offered up in exchange for loans. He should not have sold Natsuhi away so easily. He should not have cared about money more than he cared about his daughter.

But he had. Akihito could remember now, all the things he had told himself. It was for the best. It was a small price to pay to keep from losing his home. Natsuhi would be going to live among a wealthy family that never endured the sort of financial difficulties that Natsuhi had—at least he did not have to worry now about her being secure in her married life. It would be better for all of them if he did this. It would be for the best.

Somehow, while he'd almost convinced himself of all this, Akihito hadn't found it in himself to tell her that.

Until the day that he died, even if his mind was filled with cobwebs and he could not remember how to find his way home, Akihito would never forget the way Natsuhi had looked as she was taken away. He had explained to her why things were to be the way that they were, but that did not stop her from having such a frightened, uncomprehending look in her eyes. The chauffeur sent to pick her up all but dragged her to the waiting car by the crook of her elbow, as though he expected her to run away if he did not do so—Natsuhi, who had never been so forcefully handled in all seventeen years of her life, stared wide-eyed at the chauffeur as though he might strike her next to make her move more quickly. She was ushered roughly into the car, and after that, Akihito never saw his daughter again.

His wife never forgave him for what he had done. Yuuna had been a quiet, gentle woman who never breathed a word of protest against her husband unless she had no other choice, and had given no protest when Natsuhi was bartered away, but Akihito did not think that she had ever forgiven him for giving their daughter away. She would stare longingly at the place at the kitchen table where Natsuhi sat to take meals with them. Akihito would go looking for his wife and find her sitting in Natsuhi's old room, bare as it was (there came a time before he was back on his feet when Akihito was forced to sell most of his children's possessions, those that had been left behind, to pay the bills; he'd felt horrible doing it, but they needed to be able to keep the electricity running), just sitting there, with a horribly blank expression on her face. As she was dying, Yuuna had expressed a wish to have her children at her bedside, and at that point, the daughter she'd not seen in nearly twenty-five years was at the forefront of her mind.

His sons, Natsuhi's older and younger brothers, had never forgiven him either. However, unlike their mother, they had made sure that he knew that they would never forgive him for giving their sister away.

"Are you joking?! She's our sister, your daughter, not a piece of furniture or a cow you can sell for some extra cash! You had no right! You're just making her do the work to pay off your debts!"

Akio and Masayoshi, aged twenty-one and fifteen respectively at the time, had stayed just long enough to see Natsuhi off, and then they had left. They had gone to live somewhere in Tokyo. Where in Tokyo, Akihito could not say, and Tokyo was so much like a planet unto itself that he would not have begun to know where to look. Their disgust with their father, who in their eyes had treated their sister like a belonging, a possession to be sold when money was scarce, was so great that they left their parents' home and never returned, never spoke to their father again. When they married, had children, when Akio's first grandchild was born, Akihito did not learn about until after the fact, in notes and cards sent to him by his daughters-in-law, terse letters with no return addresses.

But Akihito still told him that he had had to do this, that he'd had no other choice, that it was all for the best. For so long he told himself that incessantly, every day to stem the creeping flow of guilt into his heart. He told himself that his sons, his wife, they would all see in time, they would all see it the same way he had. They had to. Didn't they?

They didn't, and when his wife laid dying in the hospital, when his sons refused to even attend her wake and funeral because it would have meant interacting with him, when he was left alone with all his regrets, Akihito at last saw it the way they had.

In his youth, Akihito had known men who would sell their wives, their sisters or their daughters into prostitution to cover their debts. He had felt nothing but contempt and disgust for these men. They did not even have the fortitude to work their debts off themselves; instead, they forced their women-folk to do it for them, and in such a degrading way, too. How was what he'd done to Natsuhi any different? The title of 'wife' was certainly a far more respectable one than 'prostitute', but forced into marriage, into a family and a situation that she was not permitted to leave, that was little better than forced prostitution. The only difference was that Natsuhi was bound to one man, and not expect to serve the pleasures of many.

Akihito had counted all of his children as precious, but if he was honest with himself, Natsuhi had been especially precious to him. Natsuhi was the only one of his children to take an interest in the Shinto shrine Akihito served as priest of—he and his father had at one point hoped that they would be able to turn the shrine over to her when they could no longer maintain it. For all that her grades in school had never been better than average and she did not always have the easiest time controlling her temper, she had been a conscientious daughter, both at the shrine and at home. She had always strived to do what was right and do right by their family name. She had deserved better to be fobbed off to another family in exchange for a reconciliation of debts owed, like a cash payment or, indeed, like a piece of furniture or a cow.

He had no right. He had no right to force an innocent person, his daughter, to be a sacrifice, a hostage, to pay off his debts.

Furude Akihito had to live with his guilt, his shame, his regrets. He had to live with the fact that he had been so wrapped up in the idea that everything would be fine if he could just pay off his debts that he'd treated his own daughter as chattel to be sold the same way someone would sell extraneous pieces of furniture when they needed more money. He had to live with the fact that his wife had never forgiven him for this, and that Yuuna had gone to her grave unable to forgive him for what he'd done. He had to live with the fact that his sons would never forgive him, nor even consent to speak with him to entertain the idea of remorse and forgiveness. He had to live with the fact that he would never be a part of his grandchildren or great-grandchildren's lives, thanks to his.

And now, he had to live with the fact that his daughter was dead, and that she would never hear the words of shame and remorse. He had to live with the fact that Natsuhi would never hear his words to forgive him.

Perhaps it was because of this guilt, the fact that the one he longed the most to be forgiven by would never do so, for all time, that he had taken in Jessica when her family was killed. Perhaps it was because of this guilt that he had immediately agreed to help her get Ange away from her mother's family when she brought the matter up to him, pale-faced and nervous as she was. But he would never regret it.

Akihito knew that he could not be forgiven. He could not look to Natsuhi's daughter for forgiveness—he could not even bear to tell her the tale, for fear that she would be disgusted with him and reject him as his sons had done. But she had been sitting alone at her parents' funeral, frightened with no place to go, and she had looked so much like Natsuhi that he could not bring himself to walk away from her and leave her on her own. If he could not do right by Natsuhi, maybe he could at least do right by her daughter.

Maybe he was treating this like some sort of bid for redemption, after all. But Akihito knew, deep within himself, that he wouldn't find it.

-0-0-0-

Akihito wondered what Jessica and Ange had been like before they lost their family, and all of their respective fathers' relatives. He wondered if they had been cheerful girls, outgoing, with many friends and active social lives. He wondered if they had been happy, when their families were whole and they were not living in the home of a relation whom they had never met before their family's funeral.

He would have liked to have known them when they were happy. It had been so long since Akihito had lived under the same roof as someone who was happy, someone who was comfortable with themselves. The general contentment of his assistant at the shrine seemed unreal. That young man seemed so carefree that Akihito could barely believe it, but there were days when he wondered if this wasn't simply commonplace for the young, and that he himself had simply left contentment behind him long ago.

Jessica and Ange, as they were, certainly weren't content, not with themselves or with the circumstances they found themselves in. It had become Akihito's nature over the years to watch the world around him as it shifted and changed. This he did with his granddaughter and her cousin, hardly knowing what else to do, hardly knowing how to offer comfort.

At times they seemed dull and lifeless, like over-sized dolls left to gather dust and fade in the sun. They barely seemed to know what their hands and feet. Jessica in particular would stare into space, her eyes huge and glassy. Akihito could discern no sadness in her face when she did this, but he could see no joy either, and there emanated from her an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Akihito, who knew helplessness well, could do nothing but pat her shoulder as he walked by, and occasionally Jessica would notice and try to engage him in conversation, but she would put on a veneer of chatty brightness that so loudly screamed of loneliness that Akihito could not help but be terse. She didn't try to talk to him much after the first few times.

There were times when Ange would not eat anything at meal times. From what Akihito gathered, the young girl did not enjoy a large appetite to start with. Jessica had insisted on helping him prepare the meals, and she at least had a good idea of what foods Ange liked and disliked, so that Ange could at least be encouraged to eat more, but there were days and nights when the child would simply refuse to eat anything at all. She would never say why, but her little face would darken like a storm cloud, and Jessica would only try to get her to eat for a little while before giving up, and the meal would be eaten by two, with one looking on and an intangible cloud of frustration hovering over the table.

Sometimes, Ange would sit down besides Jessica as the latter played the guitar in the garden and lean into her side. Sometimes Ange would go sit in the corner of the garden and cry into her hands. Sometimes Jessica would scream and strike the walls with her fists until her skin was torn and bloody and she collapsed into a wheezing heap.

All of this, Akihito noticed. He had become quite practiced at noticing others' discontentment and grief. He did not notice, not at first, when Jessica began to smile at him when they passed each other in a hall, and the way her smile was more subdued, but also more genuine. He did not at first notice the way Ange would hum little children's songs to herself while she did her homework. He didn't notice when Ange began to eat more and when Jessica would come home from school with a bounce in her step. Even when there came little moments that shocked him, he shrugged it off. He was out of practice with noticing genuine happiness, you see.

Then, one day, Jessica came to find him in his study. Ange was standing behind her legs, as she sometimes did. They wanted to know if they could do anything to help at the shrine. Ange wore the small frown that she used to cover up shyness. There was a brightness in Jessica's eyes that was painfully familiar, and not simply because it was the same brightness that had shined there when she produced the spirit mirror which his father had owned, and given to Natsuhi when she went to marry Kinzo's oldest son.

Perhaps there would never be redemption for him. There would be no redemption, and no forgiveness. But if Akihito could not have those things, perhaps he could have back the peace of mind and heart that he had once enjoyed. Perhaps that would be enough.