Twenty-Two

She's wondering what the weekend will bring when Mom takes her by the hand, tilts her head over to where Carol impatiently stands with Aunt Miku, and says, "We'll be joining them for dinner today, Maru-chan. Tsubasa will meet us at their place."

Aunt Miku has just informed Carol of the same, for Carol turns in time for them to exchange puzzled looks twenty feet apart. It confirms that neither of them has requested to spend time together.

So, she tugs at Mom's hand and asks, "Why?"

"Why not?" is Mom's unsatisfactory response. Elfnein communicates as much to Carol, whose frustrated shrug appears to indicate a similar response from Aunt Miku.

Mom and Aunt Miku fall into step together, and then when Carol lags behind with a meaningful glance toward her, she finds it easy to match her twin's stride.

"Something's up with them," Carol mutters. "They're too… chummy." The adults don't seem to feel Carol's suspicious glower on them as they start to chat about Mom's job at Lydian Academy. Mom occasionally glances back to check on them, and Aunt Miku sometimes half-turns to smile at them, but Carol is right: the adults are in their own world, reminiscing.

"You know, I think back to some of Hibiki's stories of your time at Lydian, and everywhere I look I can see you—in the third music hall, running up the front steps, at that table on the east side of the cafeteria—I can just about picture you all as you were.

"Vibrant, young, happy. Every one of you."

Aunt Miku adjusts Mom's sunhat. "Rambunctious, melodramatic, and incurably daring."

They lean into each other as they laugh.

Carol is right, but she can't yet put her finger on why precisely their "chumminess" is something strange.

[***]

She and Carol do their homework in Carol's room shortly after Dad arrives. Well, really, Elfnein has been rolling her pencil between her fingertips and staring blankly at her workbook for a while now. Her mind is somewhere else: through the open door, down the hall, to the kitchen where the adults are making dinner altogether. Their voices overlap in a happy blur.

Well, actually, she hears a piano playing a little tune. Clear, sad notes that build up to something that's somehow energetic and melancholic, a cheerful shade of dreary. She thinks she hears the song loop, and then, someone starts singing.

« Dors, le mal est passé et tu entres dans la danse

Le pire de côté, tes rêves entrent en cadence

Tu sèmes le bonheur à chaque pas que tu fais

Et à ton réveil la vie reprend son train … »

"That's Miku," says Carol. There's pride on Carol's face even though it's a sad song. "She's good enough to sing and play the piano at the same time."

"I didn't know they speak French."

"Not exactly—it's more that they have songs memorized. Miku says that sometimes they all get together to play music."

"They do?"

Carol shrugs, "Before they had kids." They share a nod: Papa had made it abundantly clear how much having them had impacted his life even as he had stubbornly tried to shoehorn them into his lifestyle. Still, however, she finds it difficult to imagine her parents engaging with others on a frequent basis.

They fall silent when another voice joins the first.

« Dors le mal est passé, il te rattrapera pas

Le souffle coupé, tu n'es plus son appât

Ta peine s'est fondue au délire des autres

Qui oublieront bien vite que tu n'es plus des nôtres. »

Past the harmony and the language and the cadence, she knows Tsubasa's voice. That is the voice that leads her around the Kazanari estate on foggy nights, the voice that teaches her what each key on the piano is, the voices that says, Welcome home. Her dad's voice is strong, sad, resilient. Her dad's voice tells her that she has a home, a permanent home with permanent parents.

"I think dinner should be ready, right?" She stands without waiting for Carol to reply, though her twin had stood even as she spoke.

When she and Carol peer into the living room, they press against each other as they both take a long moment to take in the adults: Dad and Aunt Miku sit close enough to each other at the piano in the corner that their elbows brush, with Dad facing away from the piano itself. On the long couch along the wall, Aunt Hibiki has her head resting on Mom's lap, and Mom has one arm stretched out to hold Dad's hand. Looking at them all provides an epiphany, a revelation.

Watching her parents interact with Aunt Miku and Aunt Hibiki is a revelation.

She'd thought—she hadn't actually given this much conscious thought. It simply was what it was. Papa had had a solitary nature, so Maria and Tsubasa's physical and emotional distance from others hadn't stood out as anything noteworthy. That was just how life was: aloof from other people. Well, reserved would be a better word for it, since they weren't aloof in the sense that they disdained others. They were… simply separate, isolated, apart.

Aunt Kirika and Aunt Shirabe bypassed those walls because they were family. So was Aunt Chris. Just as Elfnein could not simply sunder herself from Carol, so too did Maria and Tsubasa have to accommodate their more gregarious family members.

Now she sees her bias. Every single one of these bonds were chosen. They were family because they had chosen to be family. As weeks and months passed, the stilted behavior melted away and it became clear that far from being "others," Aunt Miku and Aunt Hibiki were very much an integral part of this family.

When she launches herself into her dad's arms, she can see clearly the way Aunt Miku smiles beside them.

[***]

"We don't want to fuss too much about it. A modest ceremony will do," says one.

"Sure, it's gonna be kinda generic, but it'll be meaningful to us," says the other.

Mom steeples her fingers together. The room holds its breath. Mom says, "Going the hotel wedding package route will definitely cut down on the number of mental breakdowns you will have, at least." Everyone exhales at once. Mom rolls her eyes. "Honestly, girls, I'm not going to be upset that you want to have a saner experience than we did. I might point out, however, that your guest list is already through the roof with people coming from practically everywhere. How is that 'modest'?"

Aunt Chris, from where she's seated at the coffee table with Aunt Miku and Carol, replies, "It actually is modest, considering they told literally everyone we met that they were getting married and invited most of them. Do you know how many people we met? We're lucky the guest list didn't turn out, like, thrice as long as it is!"

"Not to mention that having a traditional Shinto wedding between two women at a historied hotel isn't exactly 'generic,'" Aunt Miku chimes in to nods from Dad and Aunt Hibiki, and Carol, who probably just likes agreeing with her mother. "It'll be a bit cliché, at most."

"The important takeaway here is that the wedding's already been mostly planned out, alright?" Aunt Kirika insists.

"I'm honestly impressed," Aunt Hibiki whistles as she leans over toward Mom's armchair to look through the wedding materials Aunt Shirabe produced from an ominous black suitcase.

"Right? It almost makes me want to get married again if everything is this easy," Mom says.

Dad winces, and Aunt Hibiki pats her back consolingly.

"You could renew your vows," Carol pipes up, which gets Aunts Hibiki and Miku and Mom and Dad exchanging thoughtful glances.

"Whoa, hold your horses there!" Aunt Chris waves her hands. "Let's get through this wedding intact first, please!"

Aunt Kirika says, "Don't worry, Chris, it really is going to be easy, at least compared to Maria and Tsubasa's wedding. Even with the number of guests we've invited from all over the world, this will be a piece of cake compared to wrangling assorted Kazanari clan members from killing each other and killing Maria."

"Minimal drama," Aunt Shirabe agrees.

She and Carol exchange wide-eyed looks as Dad buries her face in her hands and Mom says, "Well, what's a wedding without a stabbing or two?"

[***]

As tranquil as the wedding ceremony in the Hotel Gajoen gardens was, the wedding reception in the hotel's Maiogi hall is not at all. It's louder than a Matsuoka recess despite most of the guests being adults using their indoor voices; passing through the center of the hall had almost given her a headache. It makes her wish for the relative safety of their family's group of tables in one corner, but she hadn't wanted to stay behind all by herself—first Dad had been approached by a scary lady with blue hair, then suddenly everyone had gotten up, even Carol—so she had latched onto Mom and followed her on her rounds through the myriad wedding guests.

She's just thinking that this isn't actually so bad when Aunt Chris appears suddenly and comes to a stop directly in front of Mom, making intense eye-contact. "Have I told you lately just how much I appreciate you and Tsubasa keeping your relationship discreet?"

Mom rolls her eyes and bows to the nice lady she'd been talking to, saying "Excuse us, please." To Aunt Chris, agitatedly pacing between two tables, she asks, "How are you still embarrassed by Hibiki and Miku holding hands? It's been—"

"—No, Maria! They asked me, 'who wears this shirt better?'!"

"Let me guess," Mom sighs, exasperated, "You told them to—"

"—Get a room!" Aunt Chris hisses, except it's to Aunt Miku and Aunt Hibiki, who happen to walk past them. They are holding hands.

"I see your time globetrotting has worn away the tolerance you'd built, Chris," says Aunt Miku over her shoulder. "We're having the final toast soon, by the way."

"Double standards, Chris! Double! Standards!" Aunt Hibiki adds as they drift away past speaking range (which is actually pretty short here), melting into the boisterousness of the reception crowd.

"I mean," Mom hedges—

"Oh, don't you start!—"

"Kirika and Shirabe literally just got married!" Mom throws her hands up. "They're going to be insufferable newlyweds now, with all the extra PDA that entails—you realize that, right?"

"You realize that I spent, like, a year with just those two for company on what was essentially their honeymoon, right?"

Mom and Aunt Chris stare each other down, which is funny to see because Aunt Chris is noticeably shorter yet the guests edging around her give her a wider berth than they do Mom.

Just as Elfnein is about to brave the crowds for someone to break the standoff, Aunt Hibiki's voice rings over the hubbub: "Everyone, attention please! These newlyweds are eager to start their second honeymoon!" Laughter ripples as Aunt Hibiki rather enthusiastically taps a fork to a champagne glass. The couple of the day wave just as enthusiastically next to her, still tied tightly together by the gold-and-silver ribbon of their union rite. Projected behind them in several languages is the toast. "Let's have one last toast! A toast, to our dear friends, Shirabe and Kirika! To their happiness!"

"Cheers!"

"Cheers!"

"Cheers!" shout so many voices in so many languages that she has to plaster herself to Mom's side for refuge and is promptly swept into a fierce, constricting hug alongside Aunt Chris as Mom starts crying again. She dearly hopes Dad finds them soon.

As she casts about the crowd in search of her wayward parent, she thinks she sees: Pilotenbrille, a red smile, blonde—then Dad pushes through the crowd, eyes bright, smile blinding, and the thought slips from her mind.

"To the bonds we choose and the ties we make and the lives we build!" rings Aunt Miku's voice above the celebration.