Alnitak8: Thanks so much! The pattern of this fic will mostly be alternating POV's each chapter, with one or two exceptions. So here's a POV chapter for Kosuke, and then the next will be Kyoya's :)

bored411: I promise you'll eventually learn the reason behind the divorce. Emphasis on "eventually" lol. Thanks!

Lillyannp: I don't know why but writing Kosuke as such a Mother Hen is so fun. And I assure all readers that this fic isn't going to be pure, 100% misery for Kosuke and Kyoya. There will be a happy ending, but it's going to be another 40+ chapters of angst to get there.

SabellaX: Ahhh thanks so much! And please, PLEASE, PLEAAAASE if you notice problems like that in this fic, TELL ME. The story is founded on the liberty taken with Kosuke being the guardian of her siblings (iirc, the legal age of adulthood in Japan thus far is 20, not 18), but otherwise I do want this to be accurate for a Japanese setting, even if it is for an anime/manga about a bunch of goofy rich kids going to a giant pink school. It never even crossed my MIND to see if litter/garbage cans were a thing in Japan. I think maybe when I'm halfway through this fic I'm going to go back and revise some inaccuracies that I made, like Kosuke's compensated date taking place in a casino (Japan has them outlawed) and that her hair used to be dyed red (I said something like "blah blah her school is one of the very few that allows it blah blah" but yeah, no, Japanese schools are very strict about students not being allowed dyed hair). Anyways I've gone on a huge ramble now lol but basically I very much appreciate you letting me know and I will continue to appreciate anything else you point out to me!

Nina9802: My lips are sealed...(but also btw it's not because of infidelity I'm just going to let you know real quick k bye)

Nana-san14: Again, lips are sealed, but a conversation about Kyoya's...complicated feelings will be had.

Ale250496: Lol thank you!

Thanks everyone so much for all the reviews! It really makes my day so much better to read all of them. And thank you for the patience between chapters. This was supposed to be posted up sooner but a chapter that was supposed to be ~7,000 words long ended up being ~11,000 words long. Oops? Lol anyways thank you again! And I promise after this chapter we'll get some more of those good, good KosuKyo interactions.

"Is that Kyoya's family?"

Kosuke slaps her laptop screen shut so fast she thinks she's shattered it.

Minami jumps back from her, eyes wide and afraid. Of course it's just Minami. Who else would it be?

Kosuke takes a breath that rattles in her lungs. Every nerve in her body feels like a rubber band pulled tight. She barely slept last night. And then she woke up to this news of Kyoya's family.

"Yes, it is," she tells her sister.

"Did something bad happen?"

"Well…Not really, I guess." Kosuke lifts up the screen again. The picture on the webpage is from two years ago, according to the caption. Yoshio looks as she remembered him, all straight lines and sharp edges. Beside him is a beautiful woman smiling out to an unseen crowd. The raven hair is a dead giveaway, but there's a strong resemblance to Kyoya still, in a way Kosuke can't place. The title of the webpage reads, Ootoris Come Public with Impending Divorce. "His parents are getting divorced."

Minami goes still, not knowing what to do. For a long time she—like most children, Kosuke supposes—thought divorce was a bad thing. A bad thing that only bad people do for bad reasons. It took time to explain to her that it wasn't, not by default. Marti and Emiko have all given the hard but necessary explanation that "sometimes people just fall out of love," but after that they just said that there were "other reasons." Kosuke doesn't know when Minami will be old enough to hear about infidelity or abuse or all of the "other reasons." She just isn't today.

So Minami asks, "Why?"

"I don't know," she answers honestly. "Maybe it's private."

"Then why's it in the news?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Ootori are kind of like…celebrities, in a way. Not because they're in movies or stuff like that, but they own a big business together." Minami scrunches her brow. "Okay, you remember that time you and your friends were talking about your favorite music, and you said your favorite band was The Sugar Plum Pixies and none of your friends knew who they were?" Minami nods. The Sugar Plum Pixies were a J-Pop group that had their heyday in the 80's**. Neither Kosuke nor Minami probably would have ever heard about them if Emiko hadn't kept her old CDs as a guilty pleasure. "Kind of like that. They're famous, but not to everyone."

"Oh." Minami looks at the small faces on the screen, the scary man and the pretty lady. She must be old enough to know that they will be Kosuke's in-laws, but young enough to wonder what they will be to her. "Is Kyoya sad?"

Good question. Around eleven this morning, her phone had started going insane. Tamaki, Haruhi, the twins, even the 'Zukas were messaging her, asking her if she had known, and if she did, could she spare any details? Kosuke was honest enough to say no, she hadn't known, but smart enough to remind them not to let anyone else know that.

The 'Zukas and the twins had let her be not long after realizing she was as clueless as they were—some fare-the-well wishes, and that was it. Tamaki made her promise over and over that if she heard anything from Kyoya, to let him know. Haruhi had explained that it was because Kyoya wasn't planning on talking anytime soon.

"Why?" Kosuke had asked.

"I don't know, but I can take a guess," Haruhi had sighed. Her voice, all the way across the ocean, had crackled in her ear. "Like he doesn't have enough feedback to deal with right now."

Kosuke doesn't know what to feel, really. Maybe it's none of her business. Or maybe it very much is. These are her future in-laws. People may ask her questions, and she will have nothing to say.

Had Kyoya himself even known? Surely he had to. Maybe this is why he's seemed a bit dour lately. Or—well, since she's met him. If so, it's hard to blame his silence. They'd just barely made amends as it was, so what reason did he have to share something so personal to him?

Kosuke heeds the warning and doesn't say anything to Kyoya. When he's ready to talk, she thinks, he'll come to her. And again, this isn't even the only thing on his mind.

"I imagine so. But I'm sure he'll be okay."

Minami doesn't say anything, she just teeters on her feet. Kosuke has no other idea of how to segue into the next question, so she just tries to have a gentle voice.

"Have you thought about when you maybe want to meet him?"

Minami shrugs and mumbles, "I dunno."

Which is a child's way of saying, No. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

Kosuke's toes curl in her socks, but she presses no further. This is weird for Minami and Hitsuji both. She can't not make it weird. She has to adapt to what they need, not herself.

That said…they should probably get this out of the way soon.

Minami looks at the clock in the corner of the laptop screen. "It's one-forty-eight."

"So it is. Alright, I'm going to get my bag." Minami moves to go, and Kosuke calls out in a whisper: "Hey, hey. Super secret."

"Ssssssuper ssssssecret," Minami confirms. She holds her hand up in a closed mouth, and slithers her arm until she's out of the room. That was Marti's trick to keep them quiet. Ssssilent Ssssnake. Kosuke remembers the looks from the grocery store customers, or the people on the streets, as they watched two little children walk by, hissing ssssssss.

Kosuke's happy that she can make the joke, because their conversation about this had been anything but joking.

Today, she is going to go meet her grandfather. And her grandmother.

Which makes this a very serious operation to pull off.

Shigeo is not here right now, but Kosuke swears she can always feel him breathing down her neck. He has to stay far away from this. She's terrified to think of how he'll react, if things really are as wretched between him and her grandparents as she thinks. But she's also fed up with secrets.

She's kept in contact with her grandfather using the phone he gave her. She doesn't trust him now, not really, but her walls have come down a little bit. What little Emiko has said about her parents, Sugimoto has confirmed. If anything, he does not strike her as a potential danger any longer. Though 'dangerous' does not mean 'trustworthy.'

Knowing this, she's reluctantly decided to tell the children about him. It was hard to make it easy for the five-year-old. It only began with the revelation that oh, yeah, grandparents, we have those. And they're alive. And they want to meet us.

They'd had a lot of questions, none easy. What are they like? How'd you meet them? Why have they been gone?

What Kosuke has told them is this: She doesn't know why they've been gone. She wants to find out why. She doesn't think their grandparents are bad, but she doesn't know. So she's going to be really, really careful and try to find out more about them. But it's a secret.

Kosuke wishes that she could've been lighter about it. If only they could've pinky-promised while she told them, "If the staff ask, or he asks, just tell them I went to the store for a while!" Unfortunately, that was too risky.

Minami gets antsy with secrets. If anyone comes within a mile of figuring her out, she clams up and fidgets and refuses to look at you.

Even worse, Hitsuji gets giggly. Tee-hee, he knows something that no one else does~! It's why Minami tries to find him first at Hide-and-Seek—to find Kosuke, she just has to use Hitsuji's increasing laughter like a game of "hot or cold."

Kosuke had to tell them that this was serious. It wasn't funny. It wasn't a surprise, like Christmas presents. Shigeo is the man Kosuke tells them to stay away from, to run to their bedroom if he comes near, to not talk to him when she's not around. That man may get angry if he finds out where she went. So he can't know. The staff can't even know, they may tell.

Kosuke made sure to pick a day where she knew he wouldn't be here, out of town for what he had succinctly described as "a business meeting." Yet she's still afraid. He probably won't throw them all out if he discovers her little rendezvous, it seems like too much trouble. However, knowing what he probably won't do doesn't mean Kosuke knows what he would.

In any case, for now, it is only her and her siblings who know of this. Minami just seems confused, and Kosuke thinks Hitsuji has forgotten about it entirely by now. So it once again feels like it's just her, the only person bearing these secrets.

She retrieves her bag from the bedroom she still struggles to call hers. As she closes the door, she tries to keep everything else behind it. No missing parents, no loan sharks, no blue suits, no suspicious fathers, no arranged marriages, no lies, no divorces, no secrets. She is going to see her recently-met grandfather. That is all she has the capacity to focus on.

Passing through Hitsuji's room, Kosuke sees him and Minami stacking his building blocks higher and higher, waiting to see when they'll all come tumbling down. Kosuke wriggles her arm and hisses at them, and they do the same. Just to be sure, she presses a finger to her lips and looks hard at each in turn. Only when she knows that they know does she leave.

Kosuke has her chauffer take her into the heart of Tokyo. Then she waits twenty minutes before boarding a bus out to Misato. She suddenly feels quite lonely as she sits on the uncomfortably cushioned seat. This will be yet another experience that can't be shared.

She hadn't given much thought to Sugimoto's house. Did he say that he even had a house? Maybe it was an apartment. She can't bring an image to her mind; her idea of what makes a "home" has been compromised.

Even so, she's surprised when the skyscrapers turn to trees and the cement turns to grass. She's never been as far out as Misato. It's not exactly the countryside, but she thinks she's in the in-between state—if the countryside is white, and the city is black, she's in the gray now. There are no rolling hills or thick forests, but the houses have healthy lawns, the buildings stretching wider and wider apart. Taxis turn into minivans. Neon lights turn into road signs. She wants to say it reminds her of home, but it doesn't.

It's another ten minutes of walking once she gets off at the bus stop. Sugimoto said she'd recognize it as "the house with ivy on and a shingled roof." Just when she's about to give up and retrace her steps, she spots it. And suddenly she's very upset.

Because she instantly likes it. It's a Western-styled house, a rarity around here. Two stories, made of brown brick with sun bleached shingles on the roof. It has a cone-shaped princess tower like Shigeo's mansion, but it feels right here. To the side is a greenhouse, and all around that is a lawn that looks elegant, but not overwhelming. There are flower bushes and a fountain, but there's a little messiness to it, no marble or gold. All the flora has been lovingly tended to, except for the ivy, which has crawled up one side of the house in a thick green coat. The very ends of it taper on the white shutters of the windows, like it's trying to get inside.

Kosuke has always wanted a house like this. When she was growing up, and knew more of dreams than reality, she and her friends would talk about the houses they wanted to live in when they grew up. The other girls wanted huge mansions with giant swimming pools and ballrooms. But Kosuke had always wanted a cottage, the little woodland houses out of fairytales. She liked it when a house was small, but cozy instead of claustrophobic. She loved the idea of window seats and crawling ivy and even Dutch ovens.

So of course her enigmas of grandparents had to live in just a house. That's exactly what she needs: letting the snuggly atmosphere of the place dull her inhibitions, make her easy to sway.

Walking down the path, Kosuke braces herself. How will she greet Sugimoto? Tersely, warmly, or neutrally? Hell, how is she going to knock?

So deep is she in this contemplation that she almost jumps out of her skin when the door flies open when she's only halfway down.

"Kosuke!" Sugimoto waves at her like there's a crowd between them. He looks so…grandfatherly, in his button-up shirt and glasses. "You made it! Did you have any trouble finding the place?"

"Maybe a little bit," Kosuke answers. She looks over the exterior once more. "Your house is very beautiful."

"Thank you! Come in, come in."

Sugimoto disappears inside, and Kosuke follows. Just as she figured, it's snug as a hug inside. The sleek floors are made of a rich brown wood that stretch halfway up the walls, where they turn into an elegant floral print. There's a chandelier overhead, but it's not the jaw-dropping crystal marvel in Shigeo's manor. Kosuke's head tips at it while she takes off her shoes. It's made of glass bottles hung up by strings.

"Oh, no, Ringo—!"

Kosuke squeaks when something big and furry suddenly collides with her legs.

A Shiba Inu smiles up at her, curled tail wagging from side-to-side. The tag on his red collar jingles at he bounces in place, like he wants to jump up on her but knows not to.

Kosuke's heart melts in an instant. "Oh, look at you! What a handsome boy~!"

She scratches under his jaw and behind his ears, making his tail wag faster. Sugimoto chuckles. "Fantastic. You're friends already."

"Yes, we are!" Kosuke stands upright again, and Ringo does a little circle around her. She loves him.

"Would you like some afternoon tea?" Sugimoto's voice carries from down the narrow hall. "Here, I made a few snacks, too."

"Oh, that's very nice of…"

Kosuke blinks hard as soon as she enters the dining room. It is far more than just a "few snacks," the place looks like a tea party for royalty. Just glancing over, Kosuke sees cucumber sandwiches, deviled eggs, rhubarb scones, avocado toast, caviar dip, petit fours, madeleines…And then an entire charcuterie board, with meat, crackers, fruit, cheese, and a little jar of honey with a dipper (which she loves, for some reason). All of this, atop tiered trays, silver platters, and fine porcelain.

Sugimoto is pouring tea from a China pot, but stops when he sees Kosuke standing still in the doorway. "What's wrong? Oh, do you not like any of this? Why didn't I ask what you wanted…"

"No, no, this is all—Wow!" Kosuke shakes her head, trying to wake herself up. "It's just…This is more than a 'few snacks.' You really didn't have to do any of th—Is that lavender?"

While she goes glowy-eyed for the flower sprigs in the cheese, Sugimoto sighs in relief. "Oh, no. I like doing stuff like this."

Kosuke's mouth had been watering looking over the buffet, but now it goes dry as a desert.

"You like to cook…?"

"Mm…" Sugimoto pauses. He's gone over to a little stereo in the corner, a bit out-of-place in such a woodsy home. He presses a button, and lilting violin music pours out. "I like it when things look nice. I like decorating, and cleaning, things like that. And craft work! Embroidery, mostly, but knitting, too. I know that isn't very manly stuff, but. Well. It makes me happy."

"Yeah. That's good." Kosuke swallows. She can't explain why she was so alarmed at the notion that they may have shared a passion. She just was. "Thank you. This is very nice."

"No, Ringo, no! Come on, you just ate." Ringo whines, but obediently backs down from sniffing at the scones. Sugimoto slides a cup of steaming tea over to her. "How have you been? You and your siblings?"

"We're doing well." Kosuke takes a sip, liking the sting on her tongue. Chamomile. Simple, but relaxing. "They're doing great in school. Making a lot of friends already."

"Great! Great. And you?"

"I'm fine. It's a lot of work, but I'm managing."

"I hope you're not pushing yourself too hard. Make sure you leave time to yourself. That's what my parents warned me before I went off to college—your relaxing time is just as important as your studying time."

Kosuke nods. She's not going to tell him that she can't put relaxing time in her planner right now. "I'm taking care of myself, don't worry."

"Good. And, uh…Kyoya. Your fiancé. Is he well? I heard the news of his parents this morning."

Kosuke takes another sip and prays he won't ask questions. She grabs a cucumber sandwich. At the very least, she won't let perfectly good food go to waste. "He's…fine. But he wants space right now." She shakes her head, and says more to herself, "It's not fair, that he doesn't get to be alone and deal with it. Everyone wants to ask him questions."

"When you're a family like the Ootoris, your family matters are everyone else's business matters." Kosuke doesn't get to recover from this. Sugimoto continues, "In any case, I hope they're all doing well. I would like to meet him someday."

The cucumber sandwich in her mouth turns to ash.

He barely knows her, hasn't even met her siblings, yet he says something like that. Already making plans to be involved in her life without asking if that's what she wants. Kosuke doesn't know what she wants, if anything.

Nothing has changed since they first met. She can't decide what he is. He could be a conniving bastard acting like a docile grandfather to tear her walls down. Or he could just be a man trying to keep the family he has left. Kosuke has to figure that out, and to do that, he needs to slow down.

She takes too long to answer. Sugimoto hears her silence.

"B-But I'm happy that you're here now." Sugimoto takes a gulp of tea that probably burns his esophagus raw, but keeps speaking after. "Now we can finally talk in private."

"Right." Hope doesn't feel the same to Kosuke anymore. It doesn't feel like a swelling balloon, it feels like a turtle peeking out from its shell. "You said there were things we couldn't discuss until Airi was here. Is she?"

"She is. She just—" Sugimoto's lips twist. "She shouldn't be long, she's just…in the zone right now."

"The zone?"

Just as she says that, all the power goes out.

The sunlight pours in as bright as ever, but Kosuke still sees it. The hum of the fridge dies in an instant. The clock on the microwave goes black. The stereo goes silent. Ringo's ears twitch and his tail stops wagging. Sugimoto freezes as though there's only more to come.

It ends just as quickly, before Kosuke can even ask what's happening. Everything comes back to life. Then there's a light tinkling, and Kosuke turns to the wall behind her. She hadn't even noticed the two bells in a small box. Each has a string that disappears below.

Sugimoto sighs in relief. "Okay, that's the 'Everything is Fine' bell."

Now, Kosuke has many questions. "What the heck," for instance. What she asks first is: "What is the other bell?"

"'Everything is Not Fine.'" Somewhere in the house a door flies open and cracks against the wall. Sugimoto fidgets. "Oh, dear. Whatever is about to happen next, I apologize."

Then…something barrels into the dining room, with such an earth-shaking force Kosuke almost sends the tray of deviled eggs clattering to the floor.

It's a suit of what she can only call "blacksmithing gear." Like a Halloween costume bought at the store. Not just baggy pants and a baggy shirt, but boots as thick as tree trunks, gloves that would look large on a giant. Kosuke can't see any hint of humanity—the stranger is wearing one of those industrial face masks like a shield, with only a black line of glass for their eyes.

From behind the mask comes a shockingly feminine voice. "Alright, love. I know we talked about this, but I'm going to have to steal the blender again."

"I…" Sugimoto's eyes flick over to Kosuke. The masked person—is it Airi?—is just far enough away from the doorway, and Kosuke so close to it, that she can't be seen. "Dearest, don't you remember—?"

"Yes, Sugi, I remember what happened last time. But I pinky-promise I'll pull the plug the second I see fire, okay? Please, I'm so close. I need the blades now!"

"Dearest."

"What, Sugi? What do you need the blender for? I'll buy you another. I'll buy you five! A hundred! Just—"

Finally Sugimoto jabs a finger in Kosuke's direction with such force she almost feels it stab her. The masked figure steps closer. The mask doesn't give the slightest hint to expression, but she's definitely looking at Kosuke.

Then, without saying a word, she grabs Sugimoto by his arm and hauls him—gently, but still—into the kitchen.

She's probably trying to whisper, but Kosuke can hear every word. "Why didn't you tell me she was here?!"

"I thought you were coming up shortly! You specifically told me not to interrupt you when you're in the zone!"

"Exceptions have to be made! You should have hauled me up here the second she came!"

"Wh—Why is that on me?! Why couldn't you just be ready?!"

"I thought you said she'd be here a quarter after twelve!"

"It's a quarter after three?!"

"Exactly!"

"Don't say 'exactly!' If you thought she was going to be here a quarter after twelve, then why didn't you say anything when she wasn't here THREE HOURS AGO?!"

"You know my perception of time goes funny when I'm in the zone, Sugi!"

"Wh—" Sugimoto takes a breath so deep it's like he's been drowning. Then he lets out a breath that seems to gust up the window curtains. "This…Alright. This isn't us. We're just overwhelmed. Now, just…She's here now. Alright? She's here now, go on."

At first there's a pause. Then there's a great deal of shuffling and zipping and clacking, and some very startled sounds from Sugimoto. Finally, Kosuke's grandmother steps into sight.

It's hard to say if she looks much the same as the twenty-plus-year-old photo. Of course, it's hard to find familiarity in a stranger's face. Kosuke does remember that her hair was once long, straight, and not unlike the honey on the charcuterie board—brown in the darkness, but shining gold in the light. The years have sapped it out to an ashy gray. She's hacked it very short, as well. Most of her hair is scarcely away from her scalp, but she's left a long swatch of bangs at the front. She has crow's eyes and laugh lines, and a tiny little bandage toward her scalp. A beauty mark rests on her right cheekbone.

None of that makes Kosuke squirm, nor does the blinding smile that Airi gives her. It's her eyes. A stormy, dark blue. She knows them well.

"Hell-O! I would hug you, but…" Airi looks down at herself. Her skin is covered in a sheen of sweat, and even though she's chucked off her suit, the clothes beneath are still stained in oil and grease. "I don't think you want me to do that! So I'll just…"

She flutters her hands in the air like she's patting Kosuke on the back. Kosuke can't really tell why, but this warm welcome is more unsettling than Sugimoto's…I'm-totally-not-stalking-you approach. At least they were on the same level after. Both of them were shocked, and overwhelmed, and could scarcely get a word out. She doesn't feel like she's Airi's granddaughter. She feels like the granddaughter of one of Airi's friends come to visit, welcomed because Airi's just heard that she's a sweet girl.

"Uh. Hi." Kosuke twitches like she's going to bow to her, but stops. She cannot pick a word to describe the atmosphere. She instead scratches Ringo behind his ears. "It's nice to meet…you…?"

"Of course, of course! So, proper introduction: I am Airi. Sugimoto's wife. And your…"

"…Grandmother."

"Yep! Yep, yep, yep! I am your grandmother. And you are my granddaughter." Airi snaps her fingers into thumbs-up. "Sure are."

Kosuke looks behind her, to Sugimoto, who is wrangling with all the clothing his wife has thrown upon him. He looks as bemused as she feels.

"Aaaanyway." Airi plops down into a seat grabs a deviled egg. Then she puts it back, and pulls the entire tray to herself. "Sugi has told me everything from before. About you, and your siblings, all that good stuff. So yeah. That's where we are! Where do you want to go now?"

Kosuke can only shake her head. "I'm sorry?"

"You know. What do you want to talk about now? School? What you do for fun? What do you want to do when you grow up? Not that you're not already grown up. You're not a child. What kind of music do you like to listen to? What's your favorite color? Are you in any clubs at college? Do you have many friends? You must. We can talk about your friends. We can talk about anything! You just let me know what."

She says all this, holding one deviled egg in her fingers and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until the filling oozes onto her fingernails.

Kosuke feels many things at the moment.

Regret, mostly.

What did you sign up for? This? You signed up for THIS?

Somewhere, a clock is ticking, and each tick sounds like a gunshot in the quiet. Kosuke can't drink her tea or eat any of the food, she can't even get a word out. It reminds her of the nightmares she used to have back in school, of being forced last-minute into a play, and standing under the spotlight without a single line memorized.

Seriously.

What is she supposed to say.

Airi smiles at her, and Kosuke does nothing, and Airi keeps smiling while Kosuke does nothing. Ringo nudges Kosuke's hand, urging her to keep petting him. Their salvation comes in Sugimoto, returning only to guide his wife back into the kitchen.

"I can't breathe," Airi hisses.

"I think it's time we go into Plan B."

"What was Plan B?!"

"Did you not read the pamphlet I gave you?"

"You know I'm terrible at losing things!"

"It's the plan where we…Just. Just follow my lead."

The longer Kosuke sits in this unfamiliar and infuriatingly cozy house, listening to the stereo and the clock and the frantic whispers of her stranger relatives, the more needles she feels digging into her skin. She doesn't want to be here anymore. She just wants to go home.

Sugimoto emerges once more, Airi close behind, and Kosuke decides to grace them with one more chance. This is not a welcoming party, this is not a reunion. They are strangers and Kosuke needs them to act like it.

"Kosuke," says Sugimoto. "We understand that you know nothing about us, and we know nothing about you. And we don't want to push anything too fast. So we would like to ask you, what do you want to know first?"

Airi is practically hiding behind him. They are nothing but nerves. It makes Kosuke wary, but also—strangely—powerful.

She's not completely at the mercy of what they're willing to tell and when. That doesn't mean she can run into all of this headfirst, though. She has to…test them. The hardest part of lying, she thinks, is keeping a story straight.

So she asks them, "I just want to know about Mom first."

"What's that look for, dear?"

Kosuke snaps out of it, but she still can't take her eyes off the photograph in her hands.

"When Mom said she was a fan of The Sugar Plum Pixies, I thought she meant…casually."

"Oh no. That was a lifestyle."

"It's…I'm not going to lie, it's a little scary."

Kosuke keeps trying to take her eyes off of it, but…woof. WOOF. There's something so deeply unsettling about it, she feels like she's found a missing Salvador Dalí piece. In this photograph, there is Emiko Suzuki, eleven years old, and a DIEHARD Sugar Plum Pixiesfangirl.

Not only is she standing in front of a lifesize cutout of the J-Pop idols, oh no. She is one of them. She's wearing the high ponytails and long bangs, the knee-high socks and the Mary Jane shoes. She's holding an invisible microphone to her mouth, the other hand reaching out for the stars. It is as adorable as it is horrifying, knowing that this same girl would later write off all idol groups as "sounding like chipmunks on helium" and listen to solely classical music.

The other photographs are not nearly as horrifying, but they draw Kosuke in like a moth to flame. So many years, she'd wondered what her mother looked like when she was younger. Now here is her answer, over and over and over. There is Emiko in a petting zoo, Emiko at the beach, Emiko covered in the icing of her birthday cake. Her height goes up and down, her hair goes longer and shorter. Kosuke forgets, sometimes, that Emiko is not just her mother—that she was a person for many more years than Kosuke.

"She would get into a new thing every year," Sugimoto sighs, and hands her another photograph. She's perhaps fourteen in this one, in a white and blue baseball uniform with dirt and grass smeared over the knees. Judging by the look on her face, it was not a victorious game. "We never could predict her. She liked heavy metal, then she liked that idol stuff. She liked to play baseball, then she liked to figure skate. One day she'd say her favorite color was black, and the very next her whole closet looked like it was made of bubblegum."

Kosuke laughs. She can't help it; it's obvious in the later photos. Just like the ones Anne-Sophie had of Tamaki, they peter out in age, Sugimoto and Airi realizing they didn't have to capture every breathing moment on film. In one photo Emiko is in frilly skirts with her long hair teased into a cloud, but in another she's hacked all her hair off and has fingerless gloves and combat boots.

Then, in the photos she has with her parents, she looks happy. Not a hostage, not a princess trapped in a tower, just a normal teenage girl with her loving parents.

"What about you?"

Kosuke looks up at Airi, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from her. There are many things scattered between them—not just photos, but T-shirts, jewelry, stuffed animals. There's a signed baseball and the playbill for an opera, a chessboard with no pieces and a lopsided pottery bowl. Sugimoto is taking them one-by-one and turning them over in his hands, but Airi's eyes are all on her.

"What about me?" Kosuke stupidly repeats. Ringo's wet nose presses into her cheek, and she nudges him away with a laugh.

"Were you involved in a lot of school things?" Airi shakes her head, running a hand over a jersey. "Her friends would place bets on what she'd do the next semester."

Kosuke's walls can't decide between building up or crumbling down. This could be nothing but manipulation, she knows. So what if they've kept Emiko's belongings and she looks happy in these pictures? That's not a whole story. But this all just seems so sincere that she's wavering. If these were monsters, why would they save Emiko's treasures? Why would they keep these shirts ironed and the chessboard polished?

Then she thinks, well, she'll just match them. If they tell her these simple things about Emiko, she can tell them simple things about herself. A quid-pro-quo, even if neither will confess to their true intentions.

"I tried," she confesses at last. "When I was younger. A lot of things. I did painting for a while, and joined a nature club. I even played violin once."

"Oh, Sugi can play the violin! Sugi, go get your violin and play something for us."

"The piano, Airi. I play the piano."

"Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. Just go get it."

"You can't just go get a piano, love."

"Anyway," Kosuke goes on, wondering if this bickering happens whether she's around or not. "I didn't do any long-term stuff. I got pretty lazy when I got into high school."

"Oh!" Sugimoto waves a hand at her. "Every teenager becomes a couch potato at some point. I'm sure you did just fine."

No, I mean Mom-kept-taking-me-back-to-see-the-doctor lazy. I mean I-didn't-submit-scholarships-essays-because-I-didn't-feel-like-it lazy. I mean I-let-my-parents-worry-about-me-and-I-never-played-with-my-siblings-and-I-made-my-boyfriend-feel-like-I-didn't-love-him lazy.

"I got out alright, I guess. Good grades and all."

"Did you have a favorite subject?" asks Airi. "Emiko was always such a history buff."

"I was best at math. I wouldn't call it my 'favorite,' but I was best at it."

"Oh, she was just like that." Sugimoto shakes his head. "Bored to the point of tears doing all her equations, but always acing every test."

Kosuke nods, and looks out to the windows, just to look at something. This house was never Emiko's, they'd told her. They used to live far out to the east when she was in high school, along the coast. That's all they shared, and Kosuke guesses that's enough. It still feels strange, though. This house is as foreign to her as it would be for Emiko, and her only presence is in this chest of memories, tucked into the closet.

"Minami just likes whatever she can make stuff in," she tells them. She figures she can't just do all the initiating. "She likes to draw and paint and build. Hitsuji just likes recess."

Airi snorts, and Sugimoto laughs, and Ringo scratches behind his ear. Kosuke stacks the photographs in her hands and tucks them back into their small silver box. She has a feast of memories in front of her, but hungry for more, she looks back into the chest. It's almost completely empty, but there's yet another box inside.

"What's this?"

"Oh, dear." Airi says, coming closer. "Hold on, it's heavy."

She says this, but takes it out like it's full of feathers. The first thing Kosuke sees when it's opened is white cloth, which Airi peels away to show what's inside.

"Oh."

Airi and Sugimoto both blink at her, and Ringo seems to do the same. Finally Sugimoto laughs. "What's that reaction for?"

Kosuke shakes her head and keeps shaking it like she's a bobblehead in an earthquake. "Nothing, I just…Of course she'd have stuff like this, what was I thinking…"

The white cloth is a chef's coat, still pristine even after all these years, no stains, no singes. Kosuke wonders if it's ever seen a kitchen. There's a collection of silver kitchen knives with sleek wooden handles. There are notebooks stacked and overflowing with notes. There's a set of bowls and measuring cups. There's a cutting board littered with slashes. And more and more and more.

"Mm," Airi says. As though she wanted to make a sound but her brain couldn't decide on which one. "So she…kept baking, then?"

"She got into that when she was…sixteen? Seventeen?" Sugimoto does not reach for these things. He just stays where he's sitting and stares over them all. "We thought it was just another phase, but she stuck to it. We could hardly keep her out of the kitchen!"

Kosuke only says, "Yeah?"

"Oh, it consumed her life," says Airi. "She'd read books on food history, famous chefs, restaurants in brochure guides. She'd read recipe books like they were a novel she couldn't put down! Every spare second she had, she'd be stuffing the kitchen with cookies and cakes and all kinds of pastries. Sometimes we'd have to haul her up to her bed at midnight, she was still at it."

"That sounds like her." When she was younger, Kosuke didn't like to go into the kitchen when Emiko was baking. The look of intense concentration on Emiko's face used to scare her. When she was older, Kosuke and Marti would joke that the world would be ending and Emiko would still be icing her cupcakes. But Emiko had never found these jokes very funny. "She loved baking more than anything in the world."

"She did?" Airi asks, sounding relieved.

"When she and Marti had the restaurant, she'd do all the baking. Practically single-handed."

"She never did like it when someone tried to help. She used to say…Oh, what was it?" Sugimoto strokes his chin. "She used to say, Davidwas created by Michelangelo, not Michelangelo—"

Kosuke's eyes blow wide, and the rest of the words fly out before she can stop them."—and the guy who kept asking if he wanted some help!"

"Exactly!" Airi and Sugimoto trill together, and they laugh together, too. Airi's is high and proud, and Sugimoto's rumbles deep within his chest. Even Ringo wags his tail, feeling the joy.

Kosuke laughs once, just once, and her body doesn't know what to do about it. Like she'd just sneezed at a funeral, had just started coughing in the middle of a class exam. She can't start making warm memories and just—connecting with them. If there's a horrible truth to be uncovered, then she won't be able to live with herself, if she laughed with them now.

She tells herself this…but she still wants to keep laughing.

Her grandparents' giggles fade out as they catch her quietness. The smiles remain, wary and a little hopeful. Airi prods, "So the two of you didn't do it together?"

"She tried to," Kosuke answers, not warmly. She doesn't like those memories: mistaking salt for sugar, picking eggshells out of batter, pulling the charred remains of whatever she'd forgotten in the oven. Not just because she's better than that now, but the disappointment that shone on Emiko's face each and every time. "I wasn't really good at baking. I'm still not. It took her a while to figure out it just wasn't going to work for me."

"Ah. Well, that's perfectly fine." Sugimoto still sounds a bit disappointed as he says this. "I tried to get her into embroidery, but she never cared for it. It's fine to have interests your parents don't. Just fine."

"Well…" Kosuke taps a finger on the floor. "Baking isn't for me. But I like cooking!"

"Do you? What do you like to make?"

"I don't think I can pick just one food. I just like being in the kitchen. I do like to make dishes I know Minami and Hitsuji will like, but I always like to try new recipes, too. Foreign ones, even. I haven't had many foreign dishes, but I always like trying them, and finding new things that I like. Minami and Hitsuji aren't so adventurous, but they'll always try what I make. They both really, really like pasta, so I cook Italian food a lot. The other night I made spaghetti alla carbonara! I wanted to use guanciale, but I could only get my hands on some bacon. I did get some Pecorino Romano, though! A whole wedge of it; I got to grate it myself. I got to make the sauce from scratch, and I was worried that maybe there wouldn't be enough flavor, but oh, it was so good, and smooth…But anyways, sometimes I just like to read about food—food history, food safety, food preparation…Anything that has to do with food, I love to learn about it. I can't drink wine yet, but I've been studying on how to pair them properly with your dishes. It's tricky to pair them with desserts because of the sweetness, but Riesling and Moscato wines usually go well with them. Cheeses can go with a lot of different wines, but red meats usually just match to red wines, like zinfandel and pinot noir. I found out that the oldest manufactured wine dates back to 2000 BC! Grapes are about eighty percent water, did you know that? Did you notice that whenever you go to the store, there's never grape ice cream for sale? We have grape soda and grape candy and even grape-flavored medicine, but we don't have grape ice cream. There's so much water in them that trying to make grape ice cream on a large scale would just get giant chunks of ice in every pint…Not that grape ice cream doesn't exist, it does. Ice cream's been around for a long time, too. There's no proof of it, but legend goes that ice cream cones were invented at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904—an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes, and a waffle vendor wasn't doing good business, so they joined together and boom, history was made! Oh, and in South America, there are beans called Inga edulis that apparently taste just like vanilla ice cream. In Turkey, they have dondurma, an ice cream that doesn't melt! It's really stretchy and sticky, like dough, almost, and part of it comes from orchids! There's also an ice cream called booza, and…"

Kosuke stops herself, like it'll do any good at this point.

At first neither Airi nor Sugimoto say anything as she silently burns with humiliation. She's a nineteen-year-old college student acting like a child talking about their favorite TV show's latest episode. And then! And then! And then!

Airi coughs behind her hand, and Kosuke just wants her to get it over with. Just give her the nod and the lightweight "oh, that's interesting," so that they can carry on and pretend she didn't just go into a monologue that would make Shakespeare weep.

Instead: "That sounds just like her."

Kosuke blinks, uncomprehending, and Sugimoto laughs. A full, belly-shaking laugh. "Oh my word, just like her! A blast from the past!"

"Just like that night we were all having jasmine rice," Airi cackles, "and she starts talking on and on about Thai food and fish sauce and the—the fruit that smells like rotting garbage!"

"Durians?" offers Kosuke, and that just makes the two of them laugh harder, clutching their sides and howling and crying, all while Ringo shakes between them in alarm.

"She—she—" Sugimoto tries to suck in air, but he's still drowning. "Oh, she wanted to make a dessert out of some! She thought it would be a really…a really good challenge! She was so determined!"

"She bought some all the way from Thailand—!" Airi flings an arm out, the other just barely keeping her weight up. "And the look on her face when she cut one open…!"

This sends Sugimoto deeper into his cackling, so far that he isn't even making sound anymore. Airi reaches out like she's going to help him, but then she's gone, two. Husband and wife roll over the floor, wracked with laughter.

"It was the exact same face—" Sugimoto gulps for oxygen. "—the same face whenever she saw instant ramen at the store!"

Kosuke's spine snaps up straight. "She hated it back then, too?!"

"Yes! She said it was an insult—"

"—to actual ramen chefs?"

"But we never understood that!"

"Because you could say that about anything, right?" Airi and Sugimoto manage to nod despite their failing lungs. "Like, when she ate chocolate bars from the store, I never heard her apologizing to chocolatiers everywhere!"

"Oh, she loved her chocolate," sighs Airi. "But her favorite cake flavor was red velvet. And she'd get so angry if you said red velvet was chocolate!"

"'It's richer, smoother, and does not have as much cocoa in it!'" Kosuke remembers these furious rants by heart. Airi and Sugimoto do, too—judging by the second wave of hysteria that falls upon them. Kosuke feels an ache in her cheeks and realizes she's smiling with them, so wide and earnest that it hurts.

Kosuke sits there watching her grandparents remember her mother so fondly that they're weeping because of it. She is relieved, and she is pleased, and she is even happy for them and with them.

And she's jealous of them, too.

But she disregards that for now. She hasn't felt the pain of a wide smile in ages.

Laughter gives way to coughing, then wheezing, then deep exhales with audible pain. Airi pushes herself back up, but Sugimoto stays where he is on the floor, being sniffed at by Ringo.

"So," Airi coughs, "You like to cook."

Kosuke could answer that she very much does, when she can, because school has changed her schedule now, and Shigeo's mansion already has chefs, and in fact just the other night they had a wonderful spicy curry, and speaking of 'spicy,' did Airi know that when fresh peppers are dried, they are then given different names, and that, for example, a chipotle pepper is just a dried jalapeno?

What she says instead is: "Yes, I do."

"You don't have to be embarrassed," Sugimoto tells her. He's immobile from his mirth. "Passion is a good thing to have."

"Yeah, since when is happiness a bad thing?" Airi agrees. "We humans came up with the concept of 'hobbies' for a reason."

Kosuke's tongue twitches to say that her passion for all things culinary is not a 'hobby' so much as a 'lifestyle,' but knowing how utterly insufferable that would sound, she chokes the words down. She props her elbow on her knee, then her chin on her hand. "What about you? You said you enjoy doing crafts, right, Sugimoto?"

"That I do. I don't know why, but I just like to make things that are pretty. Delicate, even." Sugimoto reaches up and tugs on a white cloth draped over a dresser. It has an ornate design of flowers and leaves, not one stitch out of place, crisp and clear and tight. Kosuke had noticed it before, but didn't appreciate it, and the time it must have taken to create it. "I wasn't into much of it at first, thinking it wasn't really worth it. How many quilts can I make before I have to start getting rid of them? I embroider a design, but then it just hangs there on the hoop to be looked at. It took me a while to realize that it was enough that it made me happy. Not that appreciation is frowned upon, mind you…"

Suddenly Airi slams her fists onto the floor so hard Ringo yipes, and Kosuke with him.

"I appreciate all the pretty things you make, Sugi!"

"Mm-hm…" Sugimoto keeps running his fingers over the flowers. "Sure…"

"I do! But Sugi, darling, dearest, you know me! I'm dirty! I'm messy! When you give me a set of embroidered towels to use in the shop, I don't think, 'Oh, how lovely! I'll be sure to use these!' I think, 'These are so pretty I don't want them to ever get dirty!' And last winter, I didn't wear anything but all your knitted sweaters."

Before Sugimoto can respond, however way he will, Kosuke speaks up. Perhaps rudely, but one word Airi said jumped out at her. "'Shop'?"

"Hm?" Airi looks up from her husband—she'd leaned over him so he had to look at her—and blinks for a moment. Then she grins so widely it blinds Kosuke to look at her. "Oh, yes! It's on the lower floor, overlooking the backyard. My own personal smithy!"

Kosuke nods, not really surprised. The regalia Airi had been wearing before probably wasn't because she was knitting scarves, after all. "What do you do?"

"Anything nitty and gritty!" Airi clenches her fists until the knuckles turn snowy-white. "I want sparks flying in every direction! I want to be up to my elbows in grease! Sugi, he likes to play those dainty piano tunes, but all the music I need is my bandsaw. See that?"

Airi points to the far wall. Suspended on it is a large piece made of cast iron, in a design impossible to describe. Some parts twist like vines, others are jagged as broken glass. But it does look quite nice, in a kind of robust chic kind of way. (Kosuke saw that term in a magazine once. She thinks she's using it correctly?) She lets out a sound of awe before she can help it.

"Made it myself!" Airi punches a hand into her shoulder. "We haven't had to call a repairman in years!"

Sugimoto cuts in. "True, but it would be very nice if we stopped having situations in which a repairman would be needed."

"Anyway! Everything Sugimoto makes is beautiful, but that stuff's just not for me. I have to break a sweat when I'm having fun. I've been awarded, you know! The Annual Japanese Blacksmith Championship gave me a silver medal for my rabbit I made out of steel!"

Airi jumps to her feet to fetch it, and Kosuke can't help but smile again. The two of them make for a curious couple, but from this one glimpse she's gotten of their lives, Kosuke thinks it's a pleasant one. Just a loving husband and wife, living in their cozy cottage, spending their days partaking in their hobbies that make them happy.

Maybe. Something occurs to Kosuke as she's looking over the steel rabbit—which is very impressive. She turns it over and over in her hands.

"If I may ask," she says, and just at that Airi and Sugimoto nod, almost begging for her to continue. "You said you ran a pharmacy? I mean, pharmacies?"

For a moment Airi just rubs behind Ringo's ears, and Sugimoto sits up despite his abdomen screaming in pain.

"Well, it's a little bit of a story," says Sugimoto. "But I don't mind telling it, if you don't mind sitting tight for a minute. I'll try to spare the boring details."

Kosuke nods with maybe a bit too much energy. "No, no, please. I want to know."

Sugimoto's smile comes and goes, and he explains:

"My father owned the first Suzuki Pharmacy in Nemuro. When he passed, he left it to me to take over. I wasn't ecstatic at first; I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life yet, but I didn't think running a business was going to be it. But I got the hang of it pretty quickly. At first I was just doing the business end of it, but then I went to college to become a pharmacist myself. Revised a little, modernized a little. I set up a delivery system to deliver prescriptions to patients. It maybe wasn't what I thought I was going to do with my life, but I liked helping people. Over the years, we started to expand. Set up another location, then another, and another. We set ourselves in small towns, not the big cities. That may not sound so profitable on paper, but we skyrocketed. For some people, it was either a Suziki Pharmacy or a half-hour drive away. Now, we have over fifty locations all across Japan."

She nods along, but inside, Kosuke feels a bit unnerved to hear this. She used to travel a lot when she was younger, when it was just her and her mother—she's been to many small towns. She wonders if she ever saw a sign for Suzuki Pharmacy. She would never remember such a thing, it would be so inconsequential to her.

She wonders if Emiko ever saw signs, either. How she felt. If she was happy there wasn't one in Karuizawa.

"Anywho, nowadays, I kind of do things from a distance," Sugimoto goes on with a shrug of his shoulders. "Not retired just yet, but almost. I think I'll get a few more years under the belt."

"It looks like you'll be set," Kosuke says. She looks up at the beamed ceilings. "You two already seem so happy, I mean."

"Maybe we can start a new business," jokes Airi. "I may just open up a real smithy. Or maybe we can piggyback off you. Sounds like you're going to have a chain of restaurants by next year."

Kosuke laughs, but it feels sticky in her throat. For many reasons, but the only one she says aloud is, "I dunno. I don't think I'd be able to beat Mom and Dad's restaurant."

"Oh, don't be modest." Sugimoto opens and closes his mouth a few times. Kosuke thinks that what he says next was not what he was planning to. "But what was it like? Was it big?"

"Not really." Kosuke traces circles on the floral rug beneath her. "It was called The Lily Bowl, just a little dine-in place in Karuizawa. But it was good business! We were really popular. Even made it to travel brochures." Kosuke coughs on a laugh, remembering how many times she's heard that—in praise, in rage. It was how she and Haruhi met in the first place. "Marti did all the cooking. My stepdad. Mom would do the sweets. We were like a bistro-bakery. And Mom and Dad loved it. We even lived there! The top floor was our house."

Airi has perched her chin atop her knees, and Sugimoto has folded his legs while propping himself up on the dresser. Both are wearing somber smiles. Yet their attention is undivided.

"So." Airi coughs. "It's closed, now?"

Kosuke nods too many times while she tries to get her voice to speak. Nothing she says is really going to capture the tragedy of it. These two never saw the dining room bustling with hungry customers, let alone empty, with nothing but children's toys to take up the floor.

"I—I kind of…had to. Couldn't keep it going myself. I-It's still there, though. We still live there. Technically. When we're not here."

Kosuke starts folding up the chef's coat in her lap because the silence that follows is nothing short of hell.

"Well." Sugimoto claps his hands together. The sound is too loud. "Maybe one day it'll open its doors again. Would you like to do that? It sounds like something you'd love to do."

Kosuke wonders if Sugimoto has amnesia. She's going to inherit Amida Health. She's going to spend the rest of her life wasting away behind stacks of papers filled with numbers, not dancing through her pretty little restaurant. Her mother's restaurant. The restaurant she said she wanted Kosuke to take over, but died knowing the only thing her daughter cared to do was sit in bed all day.

"Maybe," she says. She tucks the coat back into the box with the other mementos. "But I've heard it's bad to do the thing you love as a job."

They both just nod at that. Neither say anything as Kosuke tucks the box back into the chest, but both perk up when she turns back to them.

"Did, um…Did Mom ever want to take over the business? I don't remember her ever saying she was interested in medicine or anything like that, but you said you did it because your father left it for you, and you enjoyed it, so…Did you ever talk about it?"

"We did." Airi isn't looking at her anymore. She's not looking at anything. "We…Well, I suppose we just wanted her to have a place in it. We didn't want her to do anything she didn't, but we thought it would just be a nice 'safety net,' so to speak."

"Right," says Kosuke. That was what Emiko and Marti had said…though Kosuke knew part of it was just wanting to keep the business in the family.

As she pulls her hand out from the chest, a thought strikes her like lightning. Like she's doing a puzzle and has just found two pieces that fit together.

Not only is her father the owner of an insanely profitable medical business, her grandparents are, too.

Now, it could be sheer coincidence. Maybe the only thing that ties them to Shigeo is his ex-marriage to their daughter and nothing more. Not to mention the difference in size between a line of fifty Japanese pharmacies and an international medical technology juggernaut. They certainly don't live like Shigeo—they're comfortable, but their house isn't gilded in silver and gold.

But it might not be a coincidence. However big or small, Kosuke feels eerily that there is a connection here.

"If you don't mind me asking—"

"Hon, you can ask anything," says Airi with a laugh. "Anything at all! We want to hear it."

"We've been dying to talk to you," adds Sugimoto. "So please."

She nods, a bit overwhelmed, a bit comforted. She's written off their secrecy before as just that, but there were a million other things that could have caused their fumbling, right? The awkwardness of it all, the seriousness. Grief. Cynicism has become as much of a habit to her as twirling her toes on the floor.

"The Suzuki Pharmacy business," she says, "Is that how you met Shigeo? Or is that how Mom met Shigeo?"

And just like that, the mood plummets like a stone through water.

The balloon of hope pops. All the color in the room saturates. Airi and Sugimoto's smiles pucker away, and Kosuke can see how their shoulders go rigid as stone.

No, Kosuke wants to protest. Come on, we were doing so good. Don't…

"It—" Sugimoto coughs, but it sounds so fake Kosuke cringes to hear it. "It was something like that."

He doesn't look at her when he says it, and neither does Airi. It feels like they're trying to feed her lines that she's forgotten. This is the part where you notice I don't want to talk about it, so you move on and say something like, "Oh, okay. Anyway…"

Kosuke isn't going to recite any lines, though. This whole situation is so utterly bonkers that social cues have no place in it.

"What do you mean, 'it was something like that?'"

And just—just—

How Kosuke doesn't tear the cottage apart in a blind rage, she doesn't understand. Really, she should've left the cottage by being dragged out, kicking and screaming and being stuffed into a strait jacket.

Because right then—right then, not ten seconds before, not ten seconds after, right then—the doors on the clock swing open, and a little bird peeks out to cry, Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Because of course it does!

Because the universe has decided to make Kosuke Nakahara its court jester.

She's vaguely aware of Airi exclaiming, "Oh!" She knows distantly that Ringo is barking at the cuckooing bird and that Sugimoto is rising to his feet. She can't respond to any of it immediately, though, because she's currently having an out-of-body existential crisis, wondering if she was only put on this earth to suffer.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," Airi frets. "I didn't realize we'd been talking so long. Kosuke, you're late already. You'd best get going now if you don't want any trouble."

"Oh, the food," cries Sugimoto. He scrambles out the door, with Ringo following closely at his heels. "Hold on, I'm going to bag up what I can!"

"You let me take care of all this." Airi picks up the chessboard and the jersey. That's when Kosuke comes back to earth, with a whole-body twitch to stop Airi from shutting a door in her face. "Come on. Don't forget your purse."

Kosuke stands up on legs that feel like rubber. She wants to put up a fight and tell the universe she isn't going to be pushed around like this…but she knows she can't; not now. They're right. Even if Shigeo has been disinterested in her life so far, she can't take any chances that he may just one day take a closer look. She said she was going to be back at the mansion by five, and that is that.

That doesn't mean she has to put on a smile, though.

"But we weren't done talking."

Airi hesitates for a moment but no longer. "I know. But we can talk again. Anytime you want! You just let us know! You can come here, or we can try and meet somewhere."

She's eager. So eager. And Kosuke loves that. And she hates that.

Sugimoto comes back with a brown paper bag that looks like it's about to burst. He holds it up from Ringo's inquisitive nose.

"I got you a little bit of everything," he tells her as he thrusts it into her hands. "Even the lavender. And the jar of honey. I didn't want the avocado toast to get mushy, so I gave you some rye bread and a whole avocado in case you want to make it at home."

"That's…How am I going to explain this?"

"Say you went shopping. And you swung by a café. Or something."

"You have to go, hon." Airi pats her on the back. "Come on now."

Kosuke crinkles the paper bag under her fingers. She is so over this. She feels like she's being continuously punished for things she never did.

Kosuke looks down at the bag filled with all the treats, at the mementos they've lovingly taken care of after all these years. She looks at the embroidered cloth and the oil on Airi's clothes. It's not just that they don't look like bad people, and it's not just that they seem like parents who still love a daughter who isn't there. She wants them to be. She wants to let go of all this cynicism, and she wishes the loan shark and the Blue Suit and Shigeo never happened so that she could hope the way she used to.

"I'm going to call you guys," she says at last. "About seeing you again." She looks down at the stack of photos in Airi's hands, and suddenly feels so selfish. As if Emiko is only her mother. "And I'll see about bringing Hitsuji and Minami."

Kosuke isn't looking at their faces, but she can feel the stars shooting out of their eyes. She wants them to be real.

"Of course, of course," sings Airi.

"Just tell us when, and we'll make it happen!" Sugimoto's voice starts and stops like there's so much more that he wants to say, but at last he just sighs and says what he has to. "Now go. You now how to get in contact with us."

"Goodbye."

Kosuke walks out of the room and down the stairs, and even then Airi and Sugimoto follow her until she's at the door. While she's pulling her shoes back on, Ringo brushes against her leg in farewell.

"Take care of yourself," Airi says once she's out in the sunlight. Kosuke waves back to them as she continues down the path. Sugimoto keeps going.

"Do well in school! But don't push yourself too hard! And make sure you're getting enough sleep! And remember to socialize with your friends! And with Kyoya! And keep cooking! And reading about cooking! And—"

"Sugi, the entirety of Japan can hear you!"

Kosuke almost wants to laugh, and she almost wants to cry. Ultimately her body can't decide and makes no sound at all.

She hadn't realized until now just how much she's been weathered down. She feels raggedy and misshapen and sun-bleached. She's been going through her life like a strenuous mountain hike, telling herself she just has to keep going and that she'll rest when she gets to the next stop. Except the next stop never comes, so she just keeps going with bleeding feet and an aching back. Even the good things in her life aren't just good things anymore, they're solaces. And Kosuke still can't figure out when her life became one in which she needs solaces.

It would make things so much easier if Airi and Sugimoto weren't another stone for her to lug around. But what if making things easier for the now only makes things hellish for the later?

Or what if it doesn't?

The bus back to Tokyo is almost empty. Kosuke is grateful. She takes a seat at the back and buries her face into her knees, to shut the world out and just think for five seconds.

She's getting fed up with always making decisions.

But…She'll make one more.

She will give Sugimoto and Airi a time limit—a due date, of sorts, to come to terms with the tension and the grief. They have until then to tell her everything. If they don't, then Kosuke will demand it. And if they don't after that, then it's over.

So, if they were wolves in sheep's clothing, then Kosuke will rid her life of them.

But if they're just sheep, then she'd like to keep them around.

She has the nagging thought that no matter how big or small the 'if' is, that she should keep Minami and Hitsuji away from them. After all, getting close to Airi and Sugimoto and just as quickly being torn from them would be crushing, wouldn't it?

Kosuke puts the thought away, because after all this time, she's still selfish. The selfishness has just changed form and mutated. It's not about lying in bed all day and ignoring what her loved ones want tna need, it's about her desire for some peace.

It would be nice to have something resembling a family again. And it would be nice if the world gave her a reason to hope instead of worry. And it would be nice to have two more people to remember Emiko with. That's all.