Epilogue
Momo sucked in a breath as she stepped outside to the gentle sounds of a string duet, the cold December air making the inside of her mouth and throat feel as though they'd suddenly turned to ice.
But she didn't care, and hardly even noticed; she was too caught up in wonder as she took in the view of the snow-swept mountains, spreading out beyond them in every direction.
"Papa..." she breathed, that breath hanging like a little cloud in front of her face, "Isn't this the most beautiful sight you've ever seen?"
Just behind her, she heard her father laugh.
"I don't know, Momo, I've seen a great many beautiful things in my life. But this...is certainly special," Koshiro said, stepping up beside her and smiling as he offered her his arm.
Momo was beaming as she took it, grateful for the long warm coat she hugged around herself as the two of them joined the small group of people walking out from the villa to the mountain overlook just beyond. She might have wished it was a little warmer, but she wouldn't trade this view for any tropical paradise.
Especially not today.
Momo and Koshiro joined the other people standing at the overlook, and Momo squeezed her father's arm excitedly as she looked back towards the house. They might be missing Christmas with her grandparents; for the first time in her life, they were spending this day apart from Sabine. And while there were some traditions she would miss, this was a tradition she would never have skipped.
Just over two years had passed since Momo had first opened that locked box. Hans had landed the seat with the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, and two months after his audition Momiji and Hans had been back in Japan, that time for good. Momiji had stepped into a role at the Japanese branch of his father's company as a junior VP, and though there had been a few raised eyebrows at first, he had quickly proved an excellent fit for both the role and the business.
It had been wonderful, having the two of them in Japan. Though they didn't live in or even all that near to the Sohma estate, they lived close enough that Momo could see them regularly; though they both worked long and non-traditional hours, they were able to figure out a system that worked for them all to get together.
Momiji and Hans became semi-regular dinner guests at the Sohma house, when their schedules allowed; Sabine wasn't kidding when she'd said she was excited to have another German to talk to, and she and Hans would often get to talking about their homeland and its differences with Japan, caught up in nostalgic or energetic conversations that Momo didn't quite follow but nevertheless delighted to see. Sometimes, Hans would bring food along; care packages, sent by his doting family, and he was usually happy to share what he got with Mrs. Sohma. The two of them got along like a house on fire, and it was Sabine who had started pushing for the more regular dinners in the first place; seeing her delight at the prospect had firmly laid the last of Koshiro's anxieties on her behalf to rest.
If Momiji teased Hans for being the favorite, it was light-hearted teasing; he himself might not have a shared background to discuss, but it was enough for him to be there, to listen, and to smile. He had never dreamed of having half this much, and he would cherish every moment with his family he could get.
It had startled all of them badly when, a little over a year after Momiji's and Hans' move to Japan, Sabine had announced "I wish you would both call me 'Mama.' I know you have your own mothers who you love, und I don't mean to push in, or take their places," she'd said, smiling at them both, "but I just feel so very close to you both. It is a special thing, to be able to share one's culture, und one's lives, the way we have, und I am just so proud of you both...so if you want to, I would like that. Very, very much."
Hans had looked at Momiji, who'd looked at Koshiro. Koshiro had been staring very hard at Sabine, and Momiji and Momo had both seen the way his hand had tightened around his chopsticks. But after a moment, he had taken a deep breath, then smiled himself.
"If that is what you want, Sabine, then I think that's a very sweet gesture. If you want to," he said, looking at Hans and Momiji, "then I don't have any objections."
And he'd meant it.
Momiji had felt like his heart was going to burst as he smiled at Sabine and said, "If you are sure, then I would be very happy to do that...Mama."
During her senior year, Momo had spent a lot of time discussing the future with Momiji.
"I just wish I knew what I wanted to do, Momiji. All my life, I've felt like I should know what I want from my future...but I don't. I never have. Not really," she admitted, a little embarrassed considering she was sitting in front of someone who'd had specific dreams from a very young age he'd never truly been able to pursue. "I want to be self-sufficient, I know, at least for a time; I don't just want to graduate high school and start looking for a husband," she said with a little laugh. "But I don't know what I want to do, either," she said with a sigh. "And this probably sounds terrible," she admitted, "But I also...don't exactly care."
"What do you mean by that, Momo?" Momiji had asked, and Momo looked embarrassed.
"I mean...I don't care. I don't want to dislike my job, but I don't really care about the specifics. I want to like my coworkers," she said after thinking for a minute. "Maybe something where I can work with people, but preferably not something where I have to wear a uniform," she said, looking down at her school uniform with a rueful smile. "Mama and Papa have recommended I get a degree before I start looking for a job and I probably will, but I just wish I knew what I wanted to do with it."
Momiji had been looking thoughtful, but as she finished speaking, he'd given her a grin.
"What if you came to work for me?"
Momo rolled her eyes. "I love you, Momiji, and I love Papa, but I do not want to work in business. Besides, isn't that going to be your empire, someday?" she teased, and Momiji had laughed.
"Someday, ja, if everything goes according to plan! But that's not what I meant, Momo," he said, smiling at her. "Right now, I am a junior VP, ja. But if you are going to university for another four years, then by the time you graduate..." he shrugged. "Papa is talking of stepping back within the next decade, you know. That means I'll be progressing, within that time, myself. And that means...that I will eventually need an assistant," he said, smiling at her.
Momo looked at that affectionately smiling face, and thought about what that would mean. She'd been in the office enough to have a general idea of what the assistants did, especially her father's; answering phones, managing schedules, greeting guests, making reservations, generally supporting their executive...
She could do those things. She could do those things well. She knew how to be polite to people, even difficult ones; hadn't she spent her whole life learning to be gracious, regularly being called on to be polite around her father's colleagues? She was good with scheduling, though she'd admittedly like to see a high schooler who wasn't, simply by default. And to get to be around Momiji, literally every day...
Momo couldn't contain her excitement at the idea. "You would really want me to be your assistant, Momiji?"
"Why not? We get along, you're a good communicator, you also speak English and German so would be able to easily handle all business calls I might get, it would be working with people, you wouldn't have to wear a uniform," he said, his eyes twinkling, "And I promise I won't yell at you."
Momo was so excited she couldn't talk at first, but then she asked, "Could you really do that, Momiji? Really?"
"I'll have to talk to Papa, but I'm pretty sure I could, ja. If you wanted to, Momo...then I would be very, very glad to have you."
Not too much later, Momo had graduated high school and begun her studies at a university in the Tokyo area. She moved out to a student apartment with a few friends who were likewise going to school and loved it, but she still made time to regularly see her parents, her brother, and attend their family dinners. And every time she went home and looked around the table, hearing her father and Momiji talking business at one end of the table while her mother and Hans discussed the criminal absence of wursts in Japan at the other...her heart was full.
Sometimes, Momo would feel a pang as she thought about how life used to be, for all of them. Momiji had done as he'd promised; the day after that first family dinner, he had met her after school, and told her...everything.
Nothing had truly prepared her for the reality of that conversation. There were some things she had guessed, yes, like the fact Sabine had struggled after Momiji's birth and had started to self-harm. It had been heartbreaking to learn, but not exactly shocking.
The rest...was a lot more shocking.
Momiji's self-deprecation hadn't helped when Momo was trying to wrap her brain around the Curse. It had seemed too fantastical to believe...but Momiji's eyes had been sad, and serious.
That letter from the Sohma family head, the envelope decorated with the animals of the Zodiac, and that seemingly insignificant throwaway line about the spirit of the Rabbit. Momo had almost forgotten it, but Momiji's words made it all come rushing back.
It had all been too much, Momo now knew. Mama had been a young bride, and a new mother, living in a foreign country far away from her family and the home she'd always known. She had been scared, and almost completely alone. Pregnancy and birth had been difficult, and then she had been handed her baby...who she would never hold again.
And Mama had broken under the strain.
For three years, they had tried. Koshiro had tried, attempting to raise a baby who his wife couldn't hold or stand to see. A baby who was special in the eyes of so many because of the very reason his mother couldn't deal with him. Watching, the whole time, as his wife fell further and further apart, further and further into despair, until her body and mind couldn't handle it anymore...
What would Momo have done, if she had been in her mother's shoes? Her mother's, or her father's, either? Perhaps it would have been kinder for all of them to adopt Momiji out, especially when he was a baby or a very young child. Even with the Curse, there would have been people within the Sohma family who could have been willing to raise him, especially with how generously the family compensated the caretakers of the Zodiac members. Momiji could have grown up with a home and a family, and Koshiro and Sabine...could have moved on.
Was it selfish, for Koshiro to have done things the way he had? Absolutely. Would Momo have done the same, if she was asked to give up her child?
She hoped she would never have to know.
In the end, she had sat with Momiji, her arms wrapped around him and her face buried in his shoulder, hugging him as tightly as she could. He had been her age when the Curse had broken; he had gone the equivalent of her whole life never being able to hug Momo, or Mama, or any other woman, without turning into a Rabbit.
To have gone her whole life without ever hugging Momiji, or her father...
But it was over, all of it. The Curse was broken, and Momiji was free. The Rabbit Spirit was gone...and Momo knew everything.
It had been a significantly more awkward talk with her father, later. He hadn't added much to what Momiji had told her; some things, he said, were meant only for him and Sabine. But he confirmed what Momiji had said, about the Curse, and the events following Momiji's birth.
And hers.
'Mama loves you, Momo, so very, very much. But pregnancy and birth...they were very traumatic for her, with both of you. As much as Mama would have loved to give you a little brother or sister, it was just...not a good idea.'
Sabine's sad smiles made so much sense, knowing that. Had there been moments, during Momo's pregnancy and birth, when Sabine had flashed back? When her body, or fragments of her memory, had remembered what had happened before?
Momo knew Sabine was happy now, though. She was happy, and healthy; she had been under the care of a doctor after Momo's birth, and with time, and medication, her postpartum depression had eventually faded away.
And Papa...had rested easier.
'I'm sorry, Momo. I only ever wanted to keep you safe, all of you, and to make you all know you were loved. When you were young, I had to keep you away from Momiji; I couldn't trust you wouldn't say anything to your mama. And as you got older...I was just still so afraid.'
'Momiji trusts you, Momo. He trusts that you can know this, and keep it to yourself; that you can keep it from ever coming to Mama's ears or notice. That you can keep it from changing your behavior. And I...I have to trust him, Momo. Please don't make either of us regret that trust.'
She had been confident in her promise. He could trust her; both Koshiro and Momiji could. She had already said so, and she'd meant it then, too; she wasn't a child, but a nearly grown woman. And as much she wished it were otherwise...she could acknowledge why her mother could never know.
But that was alright. Momo herself knew, and understood. There was a lot to take in, and processing had taken time. But amidst the tears and the heartbreak, the Curse, the memory loss, and the depression...there had been one brilliant, shining truth:
Momiji was her brother; he always had been; and he always would be, too.
As a winter wind whipped across the mountain overlook, Momo clung even tighter to her father's arm, and Koshiro pulled his own coat a little closer as he murmured, "The view is beautiful, Momo, but if you're ever considering this for yourself, I'd suggest the summertime."
Momo laughed. "I'll keep it under advisement, Papa, but I doubt I'll be worrying about it any time soon."
"Just making sure," Koshiro smiled. Then they both straightened up as the door to the villa opened once more and out strode Momiji and Hans, both of them smiling and handsome with matching cream-colored wool coats over their suits. And the two of them soon passed the rest of the group, walking to the edge of the overlook where a lone figure stood waiting.
The wind was cold, but Momo felt warm inside as Momiji and Hans held each other's hands, beaming as they spoke loudly to be heard over the wind.
"I, Hans Friedrich Wagner, take thee, Momiji Sohma to be my lawfully wedded husband,"
"I, Momiji Sohma, take thee, Hans Friedrich Wagner, to be my lawfully wedded husband..."
"For as long as we both shall live."
"It's so very wonderful you and your father were able to come all this way, Momo," Hans' mother said later, smiling at Momo as the wedding attendees all enjoyed champagne and food back in the warmth of the villa after the ceremony. "I know winter isn't the nicest time of year to travel, especially in the mountains!"
"I thought it was beautiful," Momo beamed at the woman who had already proved so kind if admittedly intimidating, given she had told Momo first thing when they'd arrived that they were officially family now. Hans and Momiji might have had their civil ceremony that summer, but today, in front of Hans' parents, siblings, and nephews; Momo and Koshiro; and Julia and Celeste, from their university string quartet, they had had what they would always consider their true wedding. Vows exchanged in front of their closest family, the friends who had seen them first get together...and the country where they'd met.
"Ja, it was," Mrs. Wagner agreed, wiping tears from her eyes. "They both look so very happy, don't they?" she asked, looking over at where Momiji and Hans, each holding a champagne glass in one hand and each other's hand in the other, stood talking to their fathers and Hans' older brother. And as Momo looked over, she had to agree.
There was no trace of seriousness on Hans' face just then; instead, it was lit up with happiness and wreathed with smiles, his blue eyes shining as he glanced over at Momiji. And Momiji's smile could have illuminated the night as he laughed at something his brother-in-law said, then caught Hans' eye and returned his smile. They did look so happy; so very, truly happy.
Mrs. Wagner was still talking, and wiping at her eyes. "I can only imagine how hard today must be for Momiji, and your father too, not having your mother here. I can only hope and pray that she's happy for them, too."
It had hurt, but not surprised, Momo to learn that Hans' family thought Sabine was deceased. Koshiro had always been in Momiji's life, and Momiji had had a relationship with Momo since before coming to Germany, but there was no easy way to explain Sabine. Considering how unlikely it was for the Wagners to ever cross her path, this way definitely made the most sense, though it still stung.
Still, Momo was ready to play along. "Thank you, Mrs. Wagner. It is hard," she admitted, swallowing, and knowing in her heart it was the truth. Momiji would have loved to include Sabine...but there was just no way.
But nevertheless, they all knew for a fact that she was happy for 'her boys,' as she now affectionately referred to Momiji and Hans. She had even spared them having to figure out how to exclude her; her parents were elderly, and the wedding might be in Germany, but it was too far away from her parents' home for her to be comfortable leaving them over Christmas.
'I am so very sorry, you two, but Koshiro und Momo will do an excellent job representing us all, I am sure! Und you know, both of you, how very, truly happy I am.'
Happy...that's what they all were these days, Momo thought, smiling as she looked past Mrs. Wagner to the newlywed couple. Momiji had been talking to his new father-in-law, but in that moment, his eyes flicked up just in time to meet Momo's, and he gave her the sweet, warm smile that made those golden eyes glow.
He looked so very happy, Momo thought, returning Momiji's smile. Though of course he did, she thought with a sudden flash of amusement; he'd just gotten married, and they were almost literally on top of the world!
And there was nowhere she'd rather be than here, now, sharing that happiness with one of the dearest people in her life. The one who'd always been there, and always would be.
Her brother, Momiji.
