"Okay, so, we've got it laid out that my dad is sad and your mom is grumpy and it's probably because they miss each other. Right?"
"That's simplifying things far too much," Moriko said, "But essentially, yes."
She and Akemi had stayed awake all night telling each other their life stories and comparing notes on their parents. Moriko now knew that her father (what a strange feeling) was a serious sort of person who could be standoffish but cared deeply about those he was close to. She had told Akemi all about her mother, about how she was caring and liked to tease and had a serious temper.
Most likely, their early-twenties parents hadn't been married but had been in a serious relationship that might have led to marriage. Something had caused them to split apart some time soon after Akemi and Moriko were born. They moved to different parts of the country.
The girls had no idea what, exactly, was the cause of the break-up and the move.
"Akemi."
"Yep?" Akemi glanced back over her shoulder. The two of them were walking along a path through the woods. Nakime had given them permission to go on a nature walk together since they had demonstrated a particular level of cooperation, one that Nakime had set but hadn't made clear to either of them.
"We're not the reason why our parents—"
Akemi whirled around, her eyes wide. "No," she said firmly, planting her hands on her hips, her chin jutted out in defiance at the idea Moriko had started to voice. Now that Moriko was making the connection between Akemi and her own mother, she could how many of her…sister's mannerisms were just like her mom's. "They broke up for some other reason."
"But why did they separate us?" Moriko said. A flash of rare anger broke through her, and her shoulders tensed. "And why didn't they tell us about each other? I feel like that's vital information that I would have appreciated." She would have liked to have known about her twin and about her father. "Why haven't we met before?"
"I don't know," Akemi said.
"They must have a good reason, but I can't think of what it could possibly be."
Akemi grabbed a stick off the ground and started peeling the bark off of it. It must have been rough on her fingers, but she also seemed to be in a mood, so Moriko wasn't going to point out the potential health risks. "Maybe they had to separate because…because they were a part of a covert spy organization, and they had to take on secret identities and raise us apart to keep us and themselves safe." Akemi swished the stick through the air with enough force that it whistled. She pointed the tip at Moriko. "And we'll have to become spies and continue the family legacy now that we've found out."
Moriko blinked. The two of them stared at each other until Akemi started laughing. Moriko was startled to realize she was laughing, too, her hand covering the quiet giggles. It was a serious topic, but Akemi's explanation was so completely absurd—
"You have too many family members for that to be true," Moriko said. She couldn't even remember all the ones Akemi had listed.
"They're your family, too," Akemi said. Her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh. I have even more aunts now. I think my aunts now outnumber my uncles." She twirled around once, her arms outspread. "We're going to have to make a family tree to figure all this out."
"Well, even when we get around to completing that, I doubt we'll uncover a massive spy network." She kept walking, moving down the pinestraw strewn path.
Akemi tossed her stick into the woods. "You never know."
"I would know if my mom—our mom…was a spy."
"That's going to take getting used to," Akemi said with a huff. "Our mom. My mom." She waited on the word before shaking her head and following Akemi.
"You've said it before," Moriko said, guessing. Moriko had certainly referred to "my father" before. She had asked questions. Akemi had to have done the same, just with the opposite parent.
Akemi flitted a hand in the air. "It's different now. She, like, really exists."
"She always existed," Moriko retorted.
"You can't say it's not different now," Akemi said, rolling her eyes. "And I have a sister. I always wondered if I had a sibling, I just thought they'd be a half-sibling."
"Not a twin," Moriko said firmly.
"That. Shouldn't we have sensed each other?" Akemi said. She stepped up onto a fallen log at the side of the path and walked along it for a few feet. "Isn't twin sense a thing?"
"It isn't real."
"I dunno, maybe it is," Akemi said, shrugging. "Like what if my ankle got a cramp because you sprained yours?"
Moriko shook her head. "I've never sprained my ankle."
"No, it's just an example." Akemi jumped off the fallen log.
Moriko eyed her warily. "If it was real, I feel like I would be the recipient of more residual twin sense pain than you would."
Akemi grinned, the expression sharp and mischievous. "No lies there."
They walked along for a while, exchanging more random details about their parents. They had gone to the same college, though Shinobu was a couple years younger than Giyuu. They must have met there. And fallen in love. The pictures made it very clear that they had been in love.
"And your dad hasn't dated anyone seriously?" Moriko asked. They were wandering along the edge of the lake, having followed the trail to the edge of it.
Akemi picked up a rock. "Not that I know of. I haven't met anyone he's dated." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't know about this new lady."
"Then perhaps that's not serious either," Moriko said. She perched on the side of a boulder at the water's edge. Part of the massive rock was in the water but the side she chose wasn't. "My mom has only had one semi-serious boyfriend."
"Oh?" Akemi flung the rock, sending it skipping three times over the water. She shielded her eyes against the sun to count, frowned, and then went back to looking for a new rock. "Why'd they break up?"
"I don't think she ever really loved him," Moriko said. She barely remembered that guy anyways. "Maybe they dated for convenience, and it wasn't enough. He also worked at the hospital."
"Maybe our parents broke up because Dad doesn't work at a hospital?"
"Then why would Mom break up with someone who does?"
"Good point." Akemi grabbed a flat pancake of a rock, spun, and sent it flying toward the lake. Instead of skipping, it seemed to skim the water and then sink undramatically. "Dang. Shinya is way better at this." She pointed a finger at Moriko. "But if you ever tell him that, I'll say I never said it!"
"Shinya is…Tengen and Hinatsuru's son?" Tengen of the three girlfriends. That still made Moriko's eyes widen.
"Yep," Akemi said, "They're family friends. Sort of family. Tengen's sort of Dad's friend by default because Uncle Sabito and Rengoku drag Dad along and Tengen's there a lot." She was looking for a new rock. "They're the gym people."
"Right." Moriko was making a mental map of all of these people in her head, though she wasn't entirely sure why. Unless…she was preparing for a plan that hadn't entirely made itself clear. That happened sometimes. She planned ahead for a plan that hadn't fully formed.
"And you have the cat café people and the military people."
"The military people are related by marriage," Moriko corrected, "My uncle Sanemi and his brother."
"And you have medical apprentice people—"
"Aoi and her friends," Moriko said.
Akemi bent down, twitching her fingers over the rocks. "Welp, I've just got the coffee shop people and the gym people."
"We really are going to have to write this all down."
"Why?" Akemi asked, standing up, rock in hand. "If I visit you, you'll be there. And vice versa."
Oh, she said that correctly. Sometimes Moriko felt that Akemi's vocabulary was just as extensive as her own—she just chose not to use it. Curious. Moriko tapped her fingers against the cool boulder, her fingertips settling on soft moss. "What if we weren't?"
"Weren't what?"
"What if we weren't there when the other one visited."
Akemi paused, her thumb running over the smooth surface of the rock. She looked out at the calm lake, ripple-less. A hawk soared overhead. Finally, she glanced over her shoulder at Moriko, interested, a spark of understanding in her eyes. Maybe she wasn't entirely incorrect about the twin sense idea. "I'm listening."
"That's a fish."
Shinobu dotted the canvas in front of her with a splash of purple. "Maybe."
"We're supposed to be painting cats," Kanae said, resting her chin on Shinobu's shoulder.
"It has whiskers," Shinobu said. She rolled her shoulder, trying to dislodge her older sister.
Kanae laughed and leaned away, raising her hand to briefly squeeze Shinobu's shoulder where she had rested her chin. "Maybe don't show it to Mitsuri just yet."
"Mmm…" Shinobu dunked her paintbrush into the cup of water by the plate of paint she was using and stretched her arms over her head. She had joined in on the paint party Mitsuri was leading to raise money for the cat café only after Kanae had offered to host it at her house. Sanemi had taken one-year-old Satsuki and the family dog Benjiro and vacated the premises before Kanae had welcomed the various guests inside. Yoshiko had wanted to stay. The guests were all frequent customers at the cat café, which was why the dog had also gone with Sanemi. Apparently they were all at the park. Shinobu had texted him multiple times about how he had fled at the first sign of extroverts, and he had replied back with middle finger emojis to each text.
Regardless, Shinobu wished she was also at the park. Why did they have to paint cats?
"We could paint something besides cats?" Beside her, Aoi slapped her brush across the canvas, splattering her black cat with another layer of watercolor. "No one said that."
"They're paintings for the cat café," Kanao said. "Shouldn't they be of the cats?" She was on the other side of Aoi, all of three of them clustered together on the couch. Yoshiko was squished in at the very end, pressed against Kanao's side. If Moriko had been there, she would have been next to Shinobu. Shinobu imagined the little peeved expression she would make when she noticed that Shinobu was going off script and painting her own picture.
Shinobu dipped her brush into the blue paint. "I feel like the cats would prefer pictures of fish, for obvious reasons."
"So they can think of food all the time?" Aoi countered.
Kanae, standing behind the couch, laughed. "Shinobu is rebelling because she doesn't like the subject matter."
"It's just a painting, Shinobu. You can't be scared of a painting you made yourself," Aoi said, rolling her eyes. "But you do you, I guess."
Shinobu frowned back at Kanae, blaming her for the sudden attention. Kanae only grinned and turned to her own daughter, pointing at the parts of her painting that she really liked.
"How's it going over here?" Mitsuri's bright, cheerful voice broke over them as she appeared, a grin on her face. "Do you need more paint? Does everyone have enough to eat?"
Oof, now on that front, Shinobu was perfectly content. She had a pile of sweet and savory treats on her plate, all made by Mitsuri and her café employees. Shinobu looked at the blobby fish on her canvas. She grabbed it off the easel and pulled it closer, smearing paint on her sleeve.
Behind Mitsuri, a shadow of menacing spirit that dared anyone to say a negative word in his pregnant wife's direction, Obanai narrowed his eyes at Shinobu. She frowned right back, at least until Mitsuri touched her empty easel.
"Do you want me to change the easel's height?" Mitsuri asked. She had borrowed all of the easels from the art studio next to her café.
"Oh, no, it's fine," Shinobu said, holding her rebellious fish closer. Somewhere deep in her memory, she remembered a party like this one, and a pair of cool blue eyes staring at her blankly from the corner of the room, one eyebrow raised at her strange behavior. She had been hiding a broken vase then. He had blinked when she showed him the evidence, taken the shards, and tossed them out the nearest open window. Like an absolute weirdo.
"Okay," Mitsuri said, smiling, "What kind of cat are you working on? I bet it looks great!"
"Yes," Obanai drawled, "Show us the cat."
Shinobu scowled at him and then hesitated as she looked up at Mitsuri. "It's…"
"Not finished yet," Kanae said, "We're working on it together."
"Cute! Sister project!" Mitsuri said, "I can't wait to see it."
Obanai lifted his eyebrows at Shinobu, who wanted to rip those eyebrows off his smug forehead. As Mitsuri left, Obanai following like her bodyguard, Shinobu pulled the canvas away. Purple and white and gold were smudged across her shirt. Moriko would have stared at her with the same familiar blank expression that belonged to someone else.
"I'll paint the cat, if you finish the fish," Kanae said. "Yoshiko can paint a cat too."
"Yoshiko might should paint the fish, too," Kanao said with blunt innocence.
Shinobu pressed her lips together and decided not to argue.