"Not on your own?" Kanae asked. "What do you mean that you didn't kill me on your own?"
"You know, Kanae," Anthy said. "You've known for a while now."
Kanae didn't know. She knew that Anthy had poisoned her father, and she was starting to think that Anthy had done the same thing to her. She had even been able to accept the fact that she was dead. She had accepted the fact that she was in Hell, or at least Purgatory. What more did Anthy want her to accept? If she was doomed to suffer for the rest of eternity, couldn't she at least have a clear explanation as to why?
"Why can't you just tell me what's going on, Anthy?" Kanae asked. "I've never been anything but kind to you."
"Is that so?" Anthy asked.
Images, maybe memories, flashed before her eyes at a rapid pace. Gleaming swords clanging up against each other. A black rose. Fire. Anthy in a red dress. A young boy with lavender hair. The corpse of a young boy that she had never known. A mysterious, ghostly man with light pink hair. Kanae couldn't piece together how they were connected. Or maybe she just didn't want to.
"Please just give me an explanation," Kanae said. "It doesn't need to be true. I just want this all to make sense."
"It doesn't need to be true?" Anthy asked.
Kanae shook her head. "You can lie to me if you want, but if you're keeping me here, I just want to know why."
"Look out the window," Anthy said.
"Why?" Kanae asked.
Was this yet another insult? Or was Anthy finally going to show her where she really was? Kanae couldn't be sure.
Kanae crawled over to the window and peered out through the shattered panes. She saw the same thing that she had seen before, the stars. They were beautiful, glittering against the mélange of indigo and violet that was the illusory night sky. But they didn't look any different than they had before.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Anthy whispered into Kanae's ear as she wrapped Kanae's scarf around her neck once more.
"They are, but why are you telling me this?" Kanae asked. "I wanted to know what you meant when you said that you didn't kill me on your own."
"You don't want to look at the stars with me, big sister?" Anthy asked.
Kanae couldn't take it anymore. She had put up with Anthy's subtle digs and passive-aggressive remarks for a while now. But for Anthy to finally call Kanae her big sister now, after everything she had done to her? After she had taken her away from the only person that even gave them that connection in the first place? That was too much for even Kanae to tolerate.
"Why can't you just act like a normal person?" Kanae asked. "If you did, I wouldn't have to do this!"
Kanae whirled around and ripped off her scarf. She pinned Anthy to the floor and wrapped the scarf around her neck. She was really going to do it this time. She was going to kill her. If Anthy was telling the truth, it wouldn't have even been a crime. After all, there was nothing wrong with killing your own murderer.
"I knew you wouldn't want to look at the real stars," Anthy croaked.
Her voice was strained by Kanae's efforts to choke her, but there was no fear in her eyes. They were still just as cold and foreboding as they'd always been. Kanae was determined to make her close them for good.
She had dreamt of it before, that was certain. But Kanae had always written it off as just that, a dream. It wasn't something she would ever act upon. It was just the sort of twisted fantasy that any sensible person would indulge in if they had to keep their true feelings hidden all the time. It wasn't as if she could choose to start dreaming about something else. So, she had never put very much stock into it.
But now, Anthy was under her control. She was holding perfectly still, not even making an effort to run away. The silly girl had been so confident that Kanae wouldn't have the nerve to do it. Kanae had been able to trick her into thinking that she was just a pleasant, empty-headed girl who never got angry. The sort of girl who couldn't have a single unpleasant thought, much less commit atrocious acts. But that wasn't the sort of girl that Kanae really was. At least, not deep down, it wasn't.
That had to be the real problem. Kanae wouldn't have been so preoccupied with trying to win Anthy over if Anthy would have admitted that she hated Kanae. If she let her jealousy show, instead of hiding it under false politeness, Kanae would have been able to get over it.
"Admit it!" Kanae said. "Admit that you've always been jealous of me! That you hate me for taking your brother away from you!"
Suddenly, Anthy disappeared. Had she done it? Had Kanae finally destroyed the witch? Or had Anthy fled the dangerous situation by disappearing?
Kanae held the scarf in her hands, uncomfortable to put it back on after what she might have just possibly done with it. It felt wrong to go back to wearing a scarf she might have used as a murder weapon like nothing had really happened. But she didn't want to look at it either.
As she moved the scarf to put it behind her so she wouldn't have to see it anymore, something small fell out onto the ground. It was a thin dark green cylinder. At first, Kanae couldn't tell what it was, but when she picked it up, she realized it was a cocoon. It made Kanae think of the butterfly that had appeared after the illusion of her mother had disappeared. She tried to crush in her hand, just like she had done with the butterfly, but the cocoon was hard as stone.
The harder she pressed down on it, the more that her memories started coming back to her. She saw their faces again. The ghostly man and the boy with the lavender hair.
"It wasn't me. I never wanted to kill her," Kanae's voice was shaking. "It was that person, that man. What was his name? Mikage?"
The attic didn't answer.
"I don't even know who he was. But I remember him. And I remember the boy with the black rose."