Kanae watched the butterfly flutter around the attic. Even after the surreal glow of its wings began to fade, it flew around like it could somehow see in the soft, violet tinted darkness. Kanae couldn't help but feel pity for the stupid little creature, trying so desperately to escape a room it had no hope of getting out of. It was probably best to put the poor thing out of its misery before it starved to death.
The butterfly escaped Kanae's grasp a few times before she was able to crush it in her hand. Once it was dead, Kanae's senses were overwhelmed with the smell of rotting flesh. Kanae closed her eyes, even though she knew it wouldn't do anything to stop the olfactory hallucination. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that her outstretched hand was bloated. She looked down at her other hand to check to see if it looked the same.
It may have been bloated as well, but by the time that Kanae looked down at her other hand it had already started to shrink. Instead of shrinking down to their regular size, her hands had withered into the skeletal hands of an old krone with barely any life left in her. Kanae's whole body felt dry, like all of the fluids had somehow been drained out of it.
Just when she was worried that things couldn't get any worse, Kanae felt a wriggling in her core. Were those…maggots?
No, they couldn't be. Worms didn't feed on people who weren't alive, and Kanae was undeniably alive. She wouldn't be able to feel any of this if she was dead, after all. It must have just been another hallucination. In spite of the pain she had felt when she had broken through the window, Kanae still hadn't ruled out the possibility that this was all just a very lucid dream. There was no other explanation. Anything else would have been impossible.
Kanae touched her face, expecting to feel the same sagging wrinkles that she'd seen on her hands. She could feel them on her left cheek, but when she touched the right side of her face, all that she could feel were teeth. She started to gasp, but she stopped herself. If there was a hole in the side of her face, she didn't want to tear it open even further.
She gingerly started to feel around her cheek for the edges of the hole in her skin. Eventually, Kanae's fingers made contact with dry, paper-thin skin right below her cheekbone. She desperately wished that she had a mirror. She couldn't stand the thought of not knowing what her face would look like when someone came to rescue her. If it was too monstrous, Kanae's knight in shining armor change his mind and leave her to die alone in the attic.
She crawled over to the shattered window, hoping that she would be able to see her reflection in the panes that were still intact. Unfortunately, when she got there, she discovered that all of the glass had disappeared. Even the shards of glass that had fallen on the floor had disappeared. The metal bars that had once held the glass were the only thing that had remained of the window. It was nothing more than an empty skeleton.
Kanae wondered if that's how she would end up in a couple of minutes. At the rate that her body was decaying, it wouldn't be out of the question. There was something morbidly romantic to her about the idea of being found as a skeleton, tragically neglected. The only trace left behind of a woman who was no longer wanted. If she did have to die, Kanae wouldn't have minded a death like that. She would have liked to leave nothing left over but a reminder that they shouldn't have stopped paying attention to her. They should've cared when they had the chance.
Kanae had not yet allowed herself to cry. She had been trying to wear that same pretty, smiling face she had worn all her life. Even without anyone around to see her, she still wanted to look beautiful. Kanae refused to let herself be ugly, even in the attic. But now, that was all over.
You should have taken your eyes off the stars, Kanae thought. You shouldn't have been so fixated on what was up there. You should have cared about what was in front of you. No, you should have cared about me. Not my mother. Not that girl who you moved into the Chairman's tower. And definitely not your sister. Oh, that sister of yours. Haven't you gotten tired of her yet? You've had your whole life with her, and less than a year with me. Isn't it time for you to grow up and come rescue me?
Even with the corpse-like state that her body was in, Kanae could still feel hot tears welling up in her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut to stop them from falling. She knew that if she cried in the attic, no one would laugh at her. There would be no danger in letting one more tiny imperfection show, especially now that she was something far from perfect. But she would know, and she had always been her harshest critic. Sometimes, Kanae felt like she was her only real critic.
She had been polite enough to impress people. But she had never shown enough ambition for people to expect anything but kindness from her. By never taking anything on, she had been able to become untouchable. She was a priceless work of art, not some fallible human girl. People wanted to see her, to take her from place to place, and to show her off. She could get whatever she wanted, and all that she ever needed to give anyone else in exchange was her presence.
Everyone loved Kanae immediately upon seeing her. She was well aware that meant she had an easy life. But it was so hard to be happy about that when it seemed like it was only the ones she genuinely tried to form a connection with who seemed to get bored with her. To most people, Kanae wasn't even interesting enough to be resented.
There was only one exception to that rule: Anthy Himemiya. Her fiancé's younger sister. She had never done anything outwardly mean to Kanae. Still, she had made it no secret that she was never going to welcome Kanae into her family. Sometimes she wondered if Anthy was the reason that Akio had pulled back. She hadn't thought much about Anthy at all recently. The two had barely interreacted.
Kanae couldn't remember resolving the issue with Anthy. Despite that, Kanae had a vague sense of closure about the whole situation. It would have been absurd to think that it was Anthy who had kidnapped her. But it would have been just as strange to wake up in an attic that was floating in outer space. But wasn't that what was happening to Kanae?
Kanae knew that blaming Anthy for her situation wasn't going to do anything to help her escape. But it made her feel better to have someone to blame, even if she didn't have any evidence to back up her suspicions. The girl had always been strange. Kanae didn't want to believe that one person could warp the fabric of reality like that, all on their own. But if there is anyone who could, it was Anthy Himemiya.