隠された真実
Despite Yamajijii's jarring revelation that made her forget to eat dinner last night until Shiori dragged her into the dining room for it, she hadn't forgotten her promise to meet with Aihara.
She wished she had.
But she didn't.
"I really thought you weren't going to come. It's been almost a month since we last spoke." Aihara greeted her with a small, knowing smile from her side of the desk, with papers and folders neatly arranged next to her computer, screen blackened. Her red glasses were perched in her hair, the lenses catching fragments of light from the window behind her.
Everything in her office was ordered with such perfect care. Even the fountain pen lying on a plain white notepad sat aligned with the side of the notepad. The curtain over the window was tied neatly to the side. All the beds in the room behind her were made with the blankets folded carefully up to the clean white pillows, devoid of wrinkles.
It made her want to flip a table and hurl everything around the room, mess it all up so it was just as imperfect as she was.
"I was busy." That was vague enough to satisfy Aihara without giving any details.
Pictures flashed in her mind, of Shinigami acting unlike himself when he had the chance to kill her. Shin looking up at her as he fixed up her wounded knee. Sato winding himself around her feet as he shot death glares at the Kitsune. Kagetora standing on the balcony of his beautiful abode, as lonely as Kuniumi said he was when they left the island he spread terrifying rumours about to chase off any people from inhabiting it.
'Busy' was one way to put it.
"Nevertheless," Aihara replied courteously. "Thank you for meeting me."
She dragged her absently wandering gaze from the window to the nurse. The blue Yosei was still there, bumping against the glass. Its translucent wings had lost some of its shimmer. Its whole body had grown dull, not aglow with a pale light of blue around its whole body like last time she'd seen it there.
She was honestly getting concerned that it was going to be brain damaged by the time it eventually stopped. Or was it that it simply didn't realize it was doing itself harm? Did Aihara not try to chase it away, just so it wouldn't hurt itself anymore, because she was worried other Yori Chiisai may notice her awareness of their existence? Did she know what really happened to Shiharu, and worry that a malefic Yori Chiisai like Teke Teke would notice her?
Was that the price of maintaining their safety? Having to watch a living being, no matter how unlike your, continuously hurt itself, yet unable to stop or help it because you risked your own safety by doing so?
It made her feel sick.
"Sure." She shrugged noncommittally, trying to push the memories of blood spurting everywhere as metal tore Shiharu's body to meaty pieces.
Sitting in Aihara's office again, this time knowing that she had to be on her guard, ratcheted up her discomfort to unseemly levels. It was especially made difficult by the fact that Shiori looked a little suspicious when Pai said she was going to the nurse's office to lie down for a little rest during the lunch break. Pai had told her she would be back in time for their next class. Which was Math.
With Shin, parading around as 'Hayashi-sensei'.
She was trying not to think too much about that. She had managed the last week without bumping into him at Ayashi House since they got back. She could do it at school too, even if she felt like an awkward hedgehog every time she ducked behind a corridor or in an empty classroom when she saw him in the halls – an actual Kamigami in the halls of Odori High, as if that was normal.
Nothing about it was normal, yet everyone was acting like it was. She wondered if she was the only sane one, or if it was really insanity making her think she was fine when she wasn't.
She got here in time to talk to Aihara for only ten minutes because, again, she was scared of what Aihara would tell her. At least if they ran on limited time, she could run away with legitimate reason. The nurse made no comment on her late arrival, though she did glance down at her wristwatch, and then the clock on the wall. She wondered if Aihara had figured out her escape plan.
"You said," she continued, fighting off a heavy sigh. Getting straight to the point was a thousand times better than beating around the bush in her current abrasive mood. "That you have something important to tell me."
Aihara spread her hands out flat atop her desk on either side of her. She dragged in a deep breath and expelled it in a slow stream. She looked like she was gathering up the strength to do something, and Pai wondered what it could possibly be.
After the revelations of yesterday – that not only had she once tried to kill the Kitsune King and he'd let her live, but Kagetora was once married (married), his wife had been an Onmyoji, a woman Kuniumi knew and mourned for – she felt like nothing could surprise her anymore. It was still hard for her to believe it, and not all of her had accepted it yet. She was more emotionless than usual because of it. She wondered how much she should be concerned about how easily she killed her emotions without Kuniumi there to help her do it.
She wondered why she should even care.
"I do indeed," Aihara exhaled. Her tone was sad. "Momozono-san, have you ever heard of Hanyou?"
No, but...that word made something twist painfully in her gut. She didn't know it, she was sure she'd never heard it before, but some part of her felt like she was lying to herself by thinking that.
A confused frown lowered her brow as she shook her head. "No. What is that?"
Aihara eyed her expectantly for a moment. She looked like she was searching for some clue in Pai's face that betrayed her words, some hint that she did in fact know what this 'Hanyou' thing was. Unfortunately for her, Pai had gotten very good at lying. She had on the perfect poker face as she gazed impassively back at Aihara without another word.
Aihara pursed her lips. "Hanyou, they're...how to say this." She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the first visible sign of the state of discomfort she seemed to be expertly hiding from her countenance. "You know already about Hengen, and Yori Chiisai." Pai nodded. "I assume you know of the Onmyoji and Oni, as well?"
A deeply ingrained rage at her weakness, her inability to fend off the Onihitokuchi, writhed in her. There was no cause for her to feel guilt anymore, but she still did because Shin had to suffer because of her before things got better.
Keeping her poker face firmly set, she replied blandly, "Yes."
"What do you think happens when Hengen and humans, even Onmyoji," she offered with a careless wave of her expertly hot pink nail polished fingers. "Are in a relationship and have a child together?"
She paled at Aihara's words, remembers the Tanuki's smirk as he kisses the human woman beside him who lights his eyes up before he bites into his own cinnamon bun, grinning at her bright blush.
No, she thought, horrified as she tore her mind away from getting dragged down to the darkest depths of her memories.
Even after all this time, after all these memories, a small part of her was desperately crying that they weren't real. The part of her that was a broken little girl pleaded with her to reject every single one, to dispose of them back in the hole they came from. Her memories weren't real, they couldn't be. She couldn't have killed all those people because someone ordered her to, and then simply forgotten that she did all of it.
It couldn't be.
Denial was her last chance of redemption. If Aihara was trying to tell her what she thought she was, what her mind raced ahead to realize, then that chance was gone. It meant that there was no more hope for her, because if Hengen and humans could be together like that, could have children together, it meant everything in her memories was real.
Because her first kill was them.
Them.
The Tanuki out on a normal day with a human condemned to the same fate as he for loving someone unlike her.
"No..." she shook her head firmly, refusing to believe it. "No, that is not possible."
Aihara smiled sadly, as if she could hear Pai's thoughts, or the desperation hiding just beneath the surface of her flat, mechanical voice. "Only those touched by the supernatural can see it, Momozono-san. Or those who are born with a part of it in them."
"Then what about you?"
Aihara scoffed unhappily. "What do you think I'm trying to tell you? How do you think I can see that stupid Yosei bumping on my window until it'll probably die? I am Hanyou."
Her face drained of colour at the stark confession. "What?"
Aihara nodded, a strange light – something like remorse, maybe – glinting in her eyes. "My father is Ookami, my mother is human." She lifted her left hand, palm facing her as she flashed her fingers. There was a slim gold band around her finger. "I'm married to an Ookami, Momozono-san."
You're lying. You have to be.
Pai gaped soundlessly at her, her mouth falling open as her body slumped into the chair. It was like all the wind had been sucked out of her lungs. Her eyes were wide as saucers as she looked at Aihara with renewed light. Her hands quivered and she looked down, but they didn't start shaking as they usually did. Ignoring that, she brought her astounded gaze back up to Aihara when she continued, as if she needed to keep talking regardless of however Pai reacted to her unbelievable words.
"Momozono-san, can I meet your parents?" she sounded nervous, wary, as she asked that same question again. "It's very important that I do."
Pai was so thrown into mental disarray that she forgot to lie, and the truth slipped off her tongue. "I don't know."
"What do you mean? Are they still away in Tokyo?"
She snapped her mouth shut as she realized her slip-up. She'd just admitted that she didn't know where her parents were, when before she'd said that they were in Tokyo. For a second, she considered reverting back to her lying self. Aihara didn't understand what she'd meant by 'I don't know'. She could spin her answer to be that she didn't know where in Tokyo they were. She still had no clue what Aihara's agenda was, or if she was even telling her the truth.
But what if she was?
That was the problem. What if Aihara wasn't lying? If that was the case, then wherever Aihara was going with this, it was a big deal, and Pai needed to be honest. Wherever she was going with this, she was revealing it to Pai because it had something to do with her. She kept insisting that all she wanted to do was help.
Pai was involved in it, somehow.
Her brow twisted to a knot as she bit her bottom lip, leg starting to bounce in nervous tension as she fought with herself, debating on whether or not to go with the truth. Aihara waited patiently for her, sitting back in her chair with her hands folded neatly over her trim stomach in the grey pencil skirt she wore. Aihara's face was set in kindness. It was one Pai could take no reassurance from. She didn't know if that kindness was true, or fake.
Kazuki, the psychiatrist from her first memory months ago, had looked kind. He'd been concerned, even, about her mental state. Then he said that if she didn't answer his probing questions, she'd have to go to the Doctor. It was a threat, tied in a neat, kind ribbon, but a threat all the same.
Finally, she made her decision. Aihara hadn't given her any cause to mistrust her so far. Even so, it still felt like she was holding her hand still as a butcher's knife fell down to chop it off, and she was doing it voluntarily. She wasn't planning on revealing the whole truth, but it killed her to open her mouth and say even just a tiny bit of it to a literal stranger, but the risk of lying was too great.
She licked her dry lips, wishing she'd brought her water bottle with her. "Three – no, four years ago, my...my whole family went missing. I do not know where they are," she added hastily when Aihara opened her mouth to ask. "And I do not remember anything."
Even when I decide to tell the truth, she thought dejectedly. I still lie.
Aihara closed her mouth, pursing her dark pink lip-glossed lips together as she watched Pai quietly for a while. This time, it was she who looked like she was contending with herself about something. Pai wondered what it was, what she planned to reveal next, what any of this had to do with her.
"Why don't you remember anything?" she asked gently. "Do you have some form of amnesia? Did you go to a hospital to check? If you want, I can – "
No. No.
That was something Pai was not going to tell her.
Instead, she countered, "Why do you want to meet them?" she laughed shakily as she realized what Aihara might be trying to say. "Do you think I am Hanyou? You think one of my parents is Ayakashi?"
Her own thoughts voiced aloud were a punch to her stomach. There was no way. Neither of her parents were Hengen. She would know if they were. What Aihara was insinuating was mad. Madder than Kuniumi, madder than that Pai that killed and dug a pit in herself every time she took a life, yet didn't know how to stop because she thought it would fill the hole and it never did.
Her parents were human. She'd never felt the Hengen heat with either of them. She was the only odd one out in the family – the only one who could see Ayakashi, hear them, feel them. Even before coming to live in Ayashi House, she'd come across Hengen before. In the supermarket, the book store, the library, even the playground at the park. At that age, she knew who were Hengen and who were human, knew to stay away from any Ayakashi.
If her whole family hadn't gone missing, if Shiori's parents hadn't died and she'd never met Kouta, Pai was sure that she would have gone the rest of her life never once approaching a Hengen to so much as say hello. Her stomach twisted to tight knots at the thought that she never would have met Shin, either.
There was just one problem with that assumption, one deviation from that norm, one discrepancy with that theory.
Midori.
If her family was normal, and she was the only one who wasn't, why was Midori in So Fu? Why did her memories – not just her memories, but Rikuto, someone she obviously cared about – make it out that Midori was the reason Pai ended up in So Fu? Why did he hate Midori so much, for Pai's sake?
Aihara lifted her brows minutely. "You are, whether you choose to believe me or not."
"I think I would know if I was half Ayakashi, thank you very much," she snapped weakly, trying to cover up how rattled she was on the inside with sarcasm she put no real heart behind.
Aihara cocked her head. "Would you?"
"Of course I – " she cut herself off abruptly. Would...would she?
She'd gone eighteen years without ever once having a clue that such beings, hybrids of nature, could exist. How could they? She felt the heat of Hengen, the lava of Kamigami, the ice of Yori Chiisai. Even with the Onihitokuchi, she'd felt a strange, disturbing flux of both hot and cold. But never once had she felt anything that wasn't either of the three.
She resisted the urge to call out to Kuniumi. She would know. She would know if Aihara was saying the truth, if Hanyou were real, if she was one. But Kuniumi was still gone, and she knew that no matter how much she called for her, Kuniumi wouldn't come back unless she wanted to. At this point, Pai didn't know if she would come back.
There is no response. Another coil of worry tightens in the pit of her stomach. For so long, she has wanted Kuniumi to leave her alone. To disappear. Now that Kuniumi isn't answering...she is hollow. It is like something is missing, and she can't figure out what.
But she was just so angry with Kuniumi for keeping such a huge secret from her, and one that directly involved her, not one that was part of Kuniumi's mysterious past. Kuniumi felt that rage burning in Pai, and knew that a few simple words wouldn't quell it. She must have known that a proper explanation was the only thing that would satisfy Pai, passably give her reason to forgive.
She didn't want to give that explanation. Kuniumi never wanted to explain herself to anyone or anything.
That set Pai's blood boiling all over again, and she shoved the wiggling guilt far into the black hole in her heart, where she couldn't feel it unless she consciously wanted to.
"You wouldn't know, because Hanyou do not have that pull you feel in your stomach when you're around Hengen and Yori Chiisai, or Oni. Even Kamigami." She stiffened at the mention of the Kamigami, but Aihara didn't notice. "Our scent is...transparent, shall I say? That's why it's difficult for us to tell who we are even to each other."
"Then how can you think I am one?" she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. It was still possible that all this was codswallop. Even if Hanyou existed, and even if Aihara was one as she claimed to be – if their scent was 'transparent', how could Aihara suspect that Pai is one?
Aihara shrugged. "Intuition, you could say."
"You are lying." She said in flat tones. "You are lying to me."
"I'm not, Momozono-san. I wish I was," she shook her head. "But I'm not. Life as Hanyou is never easy. You can't tell I'm one, or anyone else is, because we're built to be invisible to the eyes of both worlds. It's how we blend in, how we drift between the two so easily." She grew deadly serious in a heartbeat. "It's how we survive."
"That is convenient," she muttered tersely, still forcing herself to remain unconvinced.
Aihara shrugged. "Call it what you will, that's how it is. We're a mix of both worlds, Momozono-san. Because of that, we fly under the radar quite easily, up to a certain point." Aihara frowned then, just remembering something that made her eyes darken with worry. "Momozono-san, how old are you?"
Pai didn't know why she was asking that again. "I am seventeen," she remembered to lie, even though the sudden switch in topics dizzied her.
Aihara cocked her head. It was clear she didn't believe her. "Momozono-san," she spoke slowly. "This is a matter of life and death. Don't think I'm lying when I say that. I need you to tell me the truth – how old are you?"
Pai's lips twitched in irritation at being caught out in her lie, nervous at the terse warning in Aihara's voice that unsettled her. "Eighteen." Almost nineteen.
Aihara opened her mouth to ask something, but she was cut off by the shrill scream of the bell ringing sharply, signalling the end of lunch. She glared at her clock propped up on the wall, as if it was the cause of all her problems.
She looked back down at Pai, watching with anxious eyes as she started to push herself out of the chair, her movements slow, mind dazed. Pai was reeling as she tried to take in the impact of everything Aihara was telling her. It was too much to take in, all at once. She needed time to sift through it all.
A part of her was screaming that she sit back down in the chair and finish talking to Aihara. This was important. She needed clarification; she needed to know everything Aihara was telling her. But Pai was terrified, because the things Aihara was saying made too much sense. It lined up too well with her horrible memories, with things Kuniumi let slip over the last few months since she'd taken up permanent residence in her mind.
She didn't know how to deal with that. Not now, at least. She didn't know how she was supposed to begin considering that she wasn't human, that she wasn't as normal as she thought she'd always been until she went missing. How was she supposed to accept that, that she wasn't something she thought she was? Was that even possible?
"We're never going to get anywhere in school," Aihara grumbled testily under her breath. She looked up at Pai, slowly walking backwards, unable to tear her eyes away from Aihara yet her body moving on its own accord as it fought to flee the room. "Can we meet again? Outside of school, where we can talk properly?"
She nodded blindly; hardly aware she was now on autopilot as her mind flicked through memory after memory of her parents, trying to find a single one in which she'd ever felt something distinctly inhuman about them.
"Okay."
"Are you free this Sunday? About four in the afternoon?"
She nodded again. She was free, but she half-wished she wasn't. In fact, she wished she'd never agreed to come see Aihara again. She worried that she was making the same mistake again now, by agreeing to this meeting. How many screws were loose in her brain for her to be saying yes to this? Or was it curiosity which drew her to Aihara's words?
Thinking quickly, she decided that if they were going to meet, at least let it be on territory she knew. "Do you know Taiyou Café?"
"I do," Aihara nodded, recognition lighting her eyes. Her eyebrows crinkled as she called out again, "Momozono-san, I know this is coming out of nowhere. I don't mean to but I know I'm scaring you, but I promise, any question, any question at all that you may have – I will do my best to answer them all. Just hold out till Sunday, okay?"
It was Thursday. How was she supposed to 'hold out' until the day when Aihara possibly flipped her world more out of focus that it already was?
Without a word to show she agreed with Aihara, that she understood her, she turned heel and practically ran out of the nurse's office, fleeing from a truth she was terrified to accept because of what it meant if she'd already known it.
Before.