Living people didn't need shrines.

Shrines were for the dead, a place for the living to send them prayers and offerings. A place for the dead, too, a place for them…if it was the sort of thing you believed. Hana had never been a big believer in spirits and life after death, even as a child, no. From the first moment she realized what those pictures of her grandparents and great grandparents were in that shrine for she knew. The dead were gone and the living…it was the living who needed them the most. Needed to mourn, to say goodbye, to pretend that they were still there in some capacity. To move on…or to get stuck.

Hana was done being stuck.

"Ok, now that is officially the last of it. God, who would have known that one little kid could have had so much stuff?" asked Ichimaro as he turned the vacuum off. Hana didn't say anything, she just stared at the decals on the pink walls. Ichimaro sighed. It was hard, sometimes, being strong for his family…but he had to.

"Hana?" asked Ichimaro

"We did spoil her back then." Sighed Hana as she ran her hand across the wall. They had spent a forune decorating when they'd heard it was going to be a girl. Painting. These plastic cling things. Lace curtains. Crib. Furniture. Dolls and stuffed animals. They used to joke that if the doctor had made a mistake they'd be screwed but he hadn't. Fourteen years ago they'd brought home their little, perfect, baby girl…and twelve years ago they'd given her up.

And now she was…

Hana didn't know how things were going to be now…she just didn't know. But she did know that there was no reason to keep this room sealed up. Not when Shigeko wasn't even dead, not when they had to keep the lie up for Ritsu, and not when they were sick of keeping the lie up in the first place…or at least she was. Ichimaro was in good spirits.

Or at least he was trying to be.

"I never realized just how-how big this room was, you know? You think it's bigger than our room?" asked Ichimaro as he wrap[ped the vacuum cord up. This room was way too big for someone as small as Shigeko was…as small as she had been. She would have been teenager sized now, right? So Ritsu sized? He didn't know. Every time he tried to picture her he just saw that little toddler looking up at him asking why…

It had been for the best.

And so was this. Hana was right, it was time to stop with this macabre charade. At least in their house. His mother…this would kill her if she knew the truth. Their friends would never speak to them again either. His brother would probably change his family name and move somewhere where Ichimaro could never find him. This was…this whole thing was a mess. But they were cleaning it up at least one step at a time.

And there was no better place to start than this dusty old room.

"No, it's about the same size as Ritsu's." said Hana, walking over. He'd been trying to wrap up that cord for a while now. His hands were shaking. She reached out and took them in hers.

"There's no way Ritsu's room is this big." Said Ichimaro as Hana took his hands. He let the cord fall. Good enough. It wasn't like this thing was going in deep storage anyway.

"It would be if he didn't have so many things and if he didn't leave everything on the floor." Said Hana, letting go as soon as she felt the shaking stop.

"Think we should have him clean it when he comes back?" asked Ichimaro. Hana shook her head.

"No, no, I think he's been through enough." Said Hana. She didn't want to think about how Ritsu would react if he knew that they had not only stepped foot in his room but cleaned it, touched all of his private things, snooped. She had tried her best to only snoop when she had been worried about him…though maybe she should have done more snooping.

Maybe then she would have noticed that Ritsu was the same as his sister…and she had given her daughter up for nearly nothing.

"Think we should clean it for him then? I mean we've already got the vacuum out." Said Ichimaro

"I don't think he'd ever forgive us if we went through his bedroom. He's at that age." Said Hana

"If he ever forgives us for…the obvious." Said Ichimaro. He knew that he never would have forgiven his parents if they had lied to him like that even if it had been for a good reason…and it had been for a good reason. Hana and Ritsu in the hospital…it had been one of the worst things to ever happen to him, coming home and finding them laying in a pool of their own blood…Shigeko crying. The bathtub overflowing. Shigeko had been…she had been a normal two year old, as far as behavior went, but she'd been strong enough to pick him up…but Ritsu wouldn't understand that. He was just a kid.

It was a lot for a kid to understand.

"He has to!" said Hana, though she didn't know if she was trying to convince him or herself. She wiped her eyes. Ichimaro immediately did that thing where he stapled a smile to his face that didn't completely reach his eyes. He tried so hard for her.

"He's thirteen. Kids that age can hold grudges like nobody's business. Like, did I ever tell you about the time my brother traded all of my Famicom disks for, uh, publications of an adult nature?" asked Ichimaro, rubbing the back of his head. This story had sounded a lot funnier in his head, the kind of thing to break Hana out of that sadness fit she had been falling into, but now that he thought about it maybe she wouldn't want to hear a story about his brother trading hundreds upon thousands of yen worth of videogames for cheap porn…or how he even knew what the good stuff was like.

"Ichi, it's just us." Said Hana, rolling her eyes. It was flattering in a way that he still thought so highly of her after all these years of marriage, though the flattery was overshadowed by the ridiculousness.

"Fine, girly magazines." Said Ichimaro

"You are ridiculous!" said Hana, playfully slapping his arm.

"Well did I tell you about the time or not?" pouted Ichimaro in that way that always made her smile.

"No you did not." Smiled Hana. God, he always got her with that pout.

"Well my brother, who was old enough to know better, decided to stage a break in and take all of our Famicom games. Of course I helped him cover it all up before our parents got home, no need for them to know that I'd left the front door opened again-" said Ichimaro

"You didn't!" said Hana. He STILL had a problem with that! Maybe that would have been ok in the tiny city where he grew up but this was Seasoning City!

"Well, I was going in and out. I had roller skating to do, lots of important roller skating! And anyway, he would have gotten away with it if he hadn't decided to store his, er, reading material right underneath our bunkbed…and I was the bottom bunk!" said Ichimaro

"Let me guess, you threw away his dirty magazines and that's why you two don't speak that often?" asked Hana

"No, worse. I told our parents." Said Ichimaro. Hana gasped and smiled.

"I'm amazed he didn't kill you on the spot." Laughed Hana

"He tried! He actually tried to strangle me! It took both of our parents to pull him off of me! And even then Mom was screaming about calling the cops and putting him in an asylum for the perverse." said Ichimaro

"Asylum for the….what kind of magazines were these exactly?" asked Hana, wondering if she was ever going to be able to look her brother in law in the eye again after this.

"Normal! I mean, ok, maybe a little much for back then but practically family rated by today's standards…not that I would know anything about that, being a happily married man and all. I don't even know how I would find such things." Said Ichimaro

"Ichi, you're not Ritsu, I'm not going to go through your phone." Said Hana. Now it was Ichimaro's turn to gasp. She didn't think that it was quite so shocking. She was the one paying for the damn thing after all and she was his mother, it was the sworn duty of mothers everywhere to spy on their teenage children. She would have done the same thing for Shigeko…if Shigeko…if Shigeko was even the kind of girl who would have given her reasons to spy. She knew nothing about her daughter, nothing aside from the fact that she'd given her child to the worst sort of people, nothing aside from the fact that…that she may not have ever had a normal life…no. No. She must have. She must have…

Because otherwise Hana didn't know how she would ever be able to live with herself.

"You went through our son's phone? Why?" asked Ichimaro, taking Hana's hand in his and pulling her back from wherever she'd gone to inside of her mind.

"I was concerned about him! He'd been so distant and quiet and he hadn't been spending time with Tsubomi and you know how those two used to be like that." Said Hana. Ritsu had been so withdrawn lately, really only spending time with Teru. It could have just been the fact that he had his first boyfriend and all the things that came with being a teenager in love…or it could have been something serious. At the time Hana had thought that everything was alright. A glance through his phone revealed websites and message boards dedicated to what had seemed at the time like some sort of television show or something about psychics but now that she thought about it…

Well now she knew better now didn't she?

"So you…went through his phone?" asked Ichimaro

"Obviously I learned my lesson!" laughed Hana

"Anything we should be worried about?" asked Ichimaro. He saw her hesitate for a second. Not good.

"No, nothing out of the ordinary for a boy his age…nothing that we didn't already knew about him. Nothing bad." Said Hana

"You're a braver soul than I." laughed Ichimaro. He could only imagine the horrors that lurked within their thirteen year old son's phone. Maybe it would have been better if he'd had a…if he'd only had daughters. Girls didn't worry you about things like this.

"And I always will be." Said Hana

"You're smart too, I mean smarter than me. I mean this was a good idea." Said Ichimaro, spreading his arms out and motioning towards the sheer size of the empty space around them.

"I didn't do anything that hadn't needed doing for a while." Said Hana

"It was your idea, though, and God knows I never would have had the guts to do this on my own. I mean this room…it's been locked for so long." Said Ichimaro

"Well there's no point in locking it now. Ritsu knows the truth. We can take the shrine downstairs down, too." Said Hana

"It wasn't always for him, though, it was…it was nice to have some closure even if it was the kind of closure that…wasn't entirely truthful…and also left the door opened for all kinds of spirits." Said Ichimaro

"You and the front door." Said Hana, rolling her eyes playfully.

"I'm serious. I know that you weren't raised with this, not the way I was, but still. There's just…some things attract spirits and a shrine to someone who isn't dead yet…it's one of them. I never should have agreed to putting it up. I just wanted…I just wanted a place to visit her, I guess, a place where it was alright to think about her." said Ichimaro

"We both wanted closure, and we got it…and I mean we really got it." Said Hana. Shigeko was somewhere in the city, she had been given to terrible people, and they had messed up. She hadn't wanted this kind of closure. She had wanted just…just news. News that she was doing well in school, had met a nice boy, was maybe fighting with her adoptive parents about makeup and skirt length like a normal fourteen year old girl. Not….not this….not what she knew now.

"Yes…I know…and now we have to live with it. With what we did and…and with what we did to Ritsu, too. I don't know how he'll ever be able to trust us again." Said Ichimaro

"In time he will. He's thirteen, he's angry, and he doesn't understand. Once he's cooled down and ready to have a mature conversation he'll see it from our side and…and accept our apologies, too." Said Hana

"If he ever comes back from Reigen's. I've been texting and texting but Ritsu won't respond and I don't think that Reigen's going to toss him out on the street any time soon." Said Ichimaro. He didn't know how he felt about this, about Ritsu staying with Reigen, Reigen who had kept such a big secret about his son for him and let him go walking right into the destruction of downtown…but then another part of him wondered what Reigen could have done to stop him. The part that was grateful that Ritsu at least had somewhere safe to run away to.

"I'll call Reigen and have him send Ritsu back. He's imposed on Reigen long enough and we need…we need to move forward for once. As a family. It won't be easy it won't be fun, and it wont be painless but we'll do it together." Said Hana, taking both of his hands in her. This was something that they were both going to have to tackle together just like they'd tackled every other problem in their lives together…not that their children were problems.

No.

They never could have been problems no matter what they had put their parents through. Ritsu especially had given them no shortage of grief…but he was a good boy. A good boy who had been carrying a secret, no, two secrets with him for his entire life…two secrets that she had no problem with. She'd had years to get used to the fact that he was gay and now…now she would have to get used to the fact that he was a psychic. That he shared the same affliction that had taken Shigeko from them. That if things had gone just a little bit differently Ritsu could have….he could have been in the same boat Shigeko had been…the same boat that she had put her daughter on.

But he hadn't been.

She didn't know how he had managed to conceal it for so long or why he had known to but…but this was the reality of the situation. She had two psychic children…which meant that she hadn't had to send one of them away. Maybe she could have worked with Shigeko, worked harder to find a way to control her, worked harder to find a way to keep herself and Ritsu safe while keeping her in the home. Maybe she should have done more research instead of given up when all she could turn up was spoon benders, palm readers, and old clips from the Mogami show. Maybe she should have…she didn't know. She didn't know what she didn't know. She had done…she had done what she had thought was right and now this was where she was.

In this empty room.

This empty pink room. Cleaned and vacuumed. Emptied of everything that had been Shigeko's. The furniture, the dolls, the curtains, the bedding…all of it was packed away. The toys even…they had spent so much on those toys…and now they were gone. Boxed up, of course, not thrown away. She didn't think that she was capable to throwing her daughter's things away. She hadn't ever thought, too, that she would have ever been able to clear out this room…and now here she was. In this empty pink room with her husband and the echoes…a room that stood a chance of remaining empty forever.

Shigeko wasn't ever coming back.

She didn't see how it was possible. She had a life and…and Hana could infer that it wasn't the life that she should have been living but…but there must have been someone taking care of her beyond that man who'd tried to take over the world. She probably didn't even know the truth and…and bringing her back would be complete suicide for them…for their relationships with the extended family and their friends…but maybe she didn't need to move into this room. Maybe it could have been a playroom for Ritsu...wait, no, he was thirteen. Maybe a garish guest room, a home office, a home theatre, or another junk room…or maybe mothing at all.

Maybe it was best to leave it the way it was.

Just to leave it…to leave another shrine. But she couldn't. Shrines were for the dead and this place…this place had been a room for a living little girl. But she had to do something with it or it would turn into another shrine…she could figure that out later. She and Ichimaro and Ritsu would figure it out as a family, where they would go from here, and how…they would work it out and move forward. Because they had to or they would fall apart. She couldn't let that happen so…so they would put in the work, together, all three of them.

And maybe even take down the shrine downstairs, too, as a family. After all there was no need for it anymore.