Akemi woke with a start, sitting up in bed, her heart thundering. She couldn't remember what she had been dreaming about, but there were tears on her cheeks. Roughly she brushed her palm against her face, trying to get the lingering feelings of fear and lose to go away.

Usually when she had a nightmare, her dad was either automatically there or he woke up the instant she got to his door. He always seemed to know. She wondered if he still felt like something was off, miles away.

"Are you all right?"

Akemi wrapped her arms around her legs, squishing her blanket. "Yep. I'm great. Go back to sleep."

"You didn't sound all right. You were crying. Are you still crying?"

"Not really, not anymore," Akemi said. She wiped away the last of the tears and peered into the darkness. Moriko's eyes caught the dim light from outside. "Sorry if I woke you up."

Moriko nodded. "According to the Sleep Foundation, twenty percent of children ages six to twelve have frequent nightmares. I looked it up earlier this year."

"Okay…?" Akemi took a deep breath, still struggling with how unsettled she felt.

"I mean to say, you shouldn't feel bad about it or embarrassed." A flashlight beam nearly blinded Akemi, but Moriko quickly pointed it at the ceiling and balanced it on her bedstand table. It filled the room with a muted glow. "Twenty percent is a relatively large number. I also have them, which is why I was doing research."

All of the talk about data and research and numbers was odd but somehow comforting in how weird it was. Akemi loosened her grip on her legs. "Can you remember yours? Your bad dreams?"

"No." Moriko sounded frustrated. "I don't usually wake up crying, but sometimes I scream and I can't go back to sleep. Do you remember your nightmares?"

Akemi shook her head. "I can almost remember them right when I wake up but then they're gone. It's like, I dunno, grabbing smoke from a candle."

"Eloquent." Moriko slid off her bed, slipped her feet into a pair of slippers, and padded her way over to Akemi's bed. She brushed at the covers like she was getting rid of dust before she sat down on the edge. "That was actually rather poetic. A pleasant surprise."

"Thanks, I guess," Akemi said. She straightened one leg. "What're you doing?"

"I didn't feel like you wanted to be alone," Moriko said. Shifting back, she suddenly looked uncertain, her eyes darting back to her own bed. "Was I wrong?"

"No, no," Akemi said, "I just wasn't sure—" She stalled, unsure of whether to call Moriko out on her standoffish attitude. Just because she wasn't outgoing didn't mean she was wrong. Just different. "I didn't think you liked me. That's why we're here, because we don't get along."

"I'm considering changing my mind." Moriko put her hands in her lap.

Akemi pushed away the blankets and crawled over to sit next to Moriko. "Why? Because we play the same string game?"

"Because we've been trapped in the same cabin for four days, and you're not quite as awful as I first thought." Moriko frowned at the floor. "You might not be awful at all. I apologize. I'm not good with people."

"I couldn't tell," Akemi mumbled. She regretted it when Moriko's shoulders drew up. "I didn't mean that. Well… I just—you sort of push people away."

"I don't mean to," Moriko said. "It just happens. And I suppose it's easier to distance myself before they create the distance."

Akemi set her feet on the floor. The wooden floorboards were cool against her skin. "Your cabinmates seemed to want to be friends with you, but I don't see you hang out with them very much."

"They don't really understand me," Moriko said. She threaded her fingers together. "I'm weird."

"Yeah? Me too." Akemi smiled. "Everybody's weird in their own way. You should meet my family, we're all weirdos."

Moriko glanced at her with eyes just like her own. "You haven't met my family either. We're…eclectic."

Akemi laughed, sort of recognizing that word. "One of my uncles is super sweet but he also headbutts people sometimes. And his forehead is stupid hard."

"My uncle has chronic dry eye and a rabid death state, but he also brings my aunt flowers every week because he's secretly nice." The smallest smile appeared on Moriko's face. Akemi stared, not entirely sure if she had seen the other girl smile before. "We're not allowed to discuss his niceness, he's sensitive about it."

"My grandpa carves protection masks and wears one around our café sometimes."

"My Aunt Kanao flips coins to make decisions."

"My Uncle Sabito goes off on rants about manliness and tries to cut rocks with swords at least once a week, and my Aunt Makomo films and edits it for TikTok when she's bored."

They shared more stories about their families, each wilder than the next. Akemi told Moriko about Shinya and Hayato and the guys at the gym. Moriko told her about the Cats of Winds of Love Cat Café and the really sweet owner Mitsuri and her grumpy husband Obanai, who also worked at the same hospital as Moriko's mom and aunt.

"Your mom's a doctor? That's neat," Akemi said. Personally, she got freaked out by hospitals and sometimes fainted when she had to get a shot, but she had nothing against doctors themselves. Most of them were nice enough.

"Yes, she's amazing," Moriko said proudly. "She's kind and witty, and she stays calm unless she's really super angry." Her gaze darkened. "Except she did make me come here."

"It's not that bad, is it?" Akemi stood up, spreading her arms out wide. Talking about her family had chased away the last of her nightmare. "There's the lake and the forest and the nature trails and the food is pretty good and you get to meet people…" She lowered her arms. "But yeah, nature!"

"I like the animals here," Moriko said reluctantly. "I made friends with a squirrel."

"Huh, I've never tried that. You'll have to introduce me." She flopped back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. "I like being here. I worry about my dad when I'm away, but he's survived every year so far."

"Is he that absentminded?"

"No, not really. Sometimes he gets distracted," Akemi said, "But we take care of each other, and I…" She liked feeling needed. "I dunno, I just worry. It's just us at home." At least for now. She wondered what the deal was with Saika. Probably nothing. Right.

"I only have my mom, too," Moriko said, "I've never met my father."

"My mom left when I was a baby," Akemi said, "Not in a bad way though. It's complicated." Akemi didn't know the full story. Her dad always said he would explain everything when she was older, but he never put an age on older. And when she asked why they had split up, he only said that they had different outlooks on life and that it didn't work out. Which had to be some kind of old person code for something else because that was a dumb reason to break up, wasn't it?

She didn't understand why her mom had never tried to reach out to her, and she couldn't try to find her on her own because her dad wouldn't tell Akemi her name. Something about custody yada yada. But didn't her mom want to see her?

"My father left, too. Or we left him. I don't know all the details." Moriko hesitated and then laid back on the bed as well. "What does your dad do for a job?"

"He's a writer but also a historian," Akemi said, smiling. Overhead, a spider wove a web between a pair of wooden ceiling beams. "He's pretty good."

"Does he have a penname?"

"Nope, just Giyuu Tomioka."

Moriko huffed. "I think I've seen that name before…my mom has a lot of his novels on her bookshelf."

"She must really like the Taishō era then," Akemi said with a shrug. "That's all he writes about. Mostly horror and mysteries."

"I don't think I've actually seen her read one. Maybe she just likes collecting them."

"Guess so," Akemi said. "Some of them have really cool covers, like the one about the bear demon." Talking about her dad and his books was dredging up some of her long-dormant homesickness. The earlier nightmare hadn't helped with that either. "Want to see a picture of him? Not of the bear demon, my dad. It's old, but it's the only one not on my phone." And her phone was locked up at the main camp administration building, like everyone else's. She didn't often show people this picture, but she wanted to look at it and it would be strange to hide it from Moriko when she was right there.

"I'm glad it's not a picture of the bear demon," Moriko said, "So yes, I think I would."

Akemi grinned and got up. She fished around in her backpack and found her journal. Popping it open, she slid the strip of photos from its place at the front of the book. Crossing the room, she snatched up Moriko's flashlight and brought it over, sitting back down beside her.

"It's all tore up at the bottom, but this my dad. And technically my mom."

There were two small pictures, one on top of the other. In the first, the younger version of her dad was deadpan staring at the camera while a petite woman with purple streaks in her hair poked his cheek. In the next, he had caught her hand and was looking down at her with soft eyes while she pushed her other hand against his shoulder and smirked. It looked playful and sweet, and it was the only picture she had of her mother, which was why it stayed in her journal.

Moriko stared at the picture. She didn't say anything for a full minute. Slowly, she turned her attention from the picture to Akemi and the full force of the stare was on her. Moriko didn't blink. Akemi leaned back. "Hey, you good?"

Silently, Moriko stood up and took the flashlight from Akemi. She went over to her side of the room, kneeled down by her bed, and pulled her suitcase free.

Unsure of what she had done wrong, Akemi held onto her picture. Did she need to put it away? It seemed to have really upset Moriko, which hadn't been her plan at all, not when the other girl seemed to be warming up to her.

Moriko closed the suitcase and came back over, something small in her hands. Her fingers were trembling as she held out a partially tore white rectangle to Akemi. "This is the only picture I have of my mom and dad when they were young, before I was born."

Goosebumps rose on Akemi's arms. Moriko's picture was the same size as hers and ripped at the top instead of the bottom. Akemi lifted her half and fit it perfectly against Moriko's.

Moriko's pictures showed the rest of the story. The first showed Akemi's dad pulling the purple-haired woman to him, one arm around her back as she pressed her free hand against his chest, their gazes locked together. There was a bit of a blur since they were in motion. In the last picture, the woman had her eyes closed and a small smile on her face as Akemi's dad pressed a kiss to her forehead while holding her in an embrace.

It was Akemi's turn to stare. She opened her mouth then closed it, turning from the pictures to her…

"Moriko. When's your birthday?"

Moriko pulled her half of the picture strip back toward herself. "April 6th."

Her twin stared at her, a bewildered, wide-eyed expression on her face that Akemi knew was identical to her own. "I thought so since that's my birthday, too."