following up with the fushiguros - Chapter 38 - khaosNotRefundable - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

Chapter Text

Good wasn’t good enough.

“Idi-ot.”

Mimiko tried to mimic the syllables to match, her tongue flicking from the roof of her mouth.

Megumi’s hand shapes repeated themselves over and over. Two fingers sliding up, the second splaying down to make an almost corner.

Id-iot, she signed clumsily back, and Megumi flipped through the next page with a faint nod of approval, checking off another item on today’s list on a scrap sheet of paper. He didn’t write in the margins. These were books that smelled of a Tokyo school library, both thin softcovers that licked his fingertips and fat hardcovers crisp with polished covers. A tower of white page sandwiches.

‘Sign Language 101.’ ‘What Is Sign Language?’ ‘Top 100 Signs for Beginners!’ ‘Easiest Ways to Sharpen Your Sign’

Their titles took turns jumping out and peering up at her like a frog behind a stone. Alien eyes pocking her skin.

“Good,” Megumi added randomly now and then over glossy rustles, like an awkward sprinkle of pinched salt over watermelon slices. He tapped a flow of round boxes whose arrows still made her head spin if she looked too long. “You’re…we’re doing good. It looks more like the pictures.”

No. She had to be better. Faster. Cleaner. She had to do this all perfectly. Greatness didn’t drag its heels. It forever had its back to Mimiko far ahead, the same way she was chasing this secret practice in the precarious spaces between Seiji-san’s usual morning lessons and the time to huddle over homework in the afternoon. She only had pockets of repurposed playtime, fingers flicking behind backs and curling under tables, to spare.

Megumi slid his finger down the page. “Good…morning.” A pull of the fist by the head, two fingers crooked towards each other. “You try.”

Good…morning. “Good morning.” Faster now. Good morning. “Good evening.” One of her favourites: her hands falling sideways behind each other, followed by the finger crook again. Good evening.

Favourites didn’t matter. The tail end of summer was spreading its wings without any intention to stop. She was clutching after its fallen feathers. Running. Tripping. Running again. She had to be a perfectly flying stork just like Miharu-san asked her to. But her feet were plunged in thick, thick mud, and she could only struggle forward, her wrists hovering by her throat as she waited for Megumi to flip to the next sign.

“Lunch.” A two-fingered, sideways tap against the forehead, then a mime of chopsticks putting food in her mouth. Lunch. “Dinner.” Dinner. “Breakfast.” A curveball, but she didn’t trip up. Break-fast.

“Everything.” A big circle traced by her hands meeting at the bottom. Every-thing. “Together.”

Together. She liked how her fingers turned into a pair of logs bumping against each other.

“Okay, now…I love you.”

Mimiko’s head jerked up fast enough she almost hit the top of her cubby. A door suddenly sliding downstairs had them both sitting up alert, but Tsumiki would’ve signalled them if someone was coming up. It was time for the Fushiguros to leave soon, so the ponytailed girl had stationed herself conveniently in Seiji-san’s office, working away on the school project that involved a lot of wire-bending and popsicle stick gluing.

Once upon a time, Mimiko would’ve been jealous. She would’ve trembled behind her notebook and accused Tsumiki in brisk scrawls of taking over Seiji-san’s office, of making it her own little abode of paper folds and colour strokes.

But it had been Tsumiki who’d offered to hold her hand while they delivered vegetables and the sounds of the houses had caught her off guard, Tsumiki who’d punched Gima Kousuke clean in the gut for her, Tsumiki whom she’d caught staring into space with tight fists and a chewed lip before she and Megumi had left that evening, the entire event sealed behind righteous, reluctantly zipped lips.

Fushiguro Tsumiki was amazing. She could admit that much.

…would Geto Mimiko be too, at this rate?

“I love you,” Megumi repeated once he’d twisted back around, drawing his pointer and his thumb together from his chin. The tanzaku paper strips he’d finished for today sprouted from his randoseru’s outer pocket, the long top flap laid flat between them as a fold-out study mat. “...you’re the one who told me to put that at the top of the learning list.”

Mimiko curled her fists in her lap. She looked away. A refusal. The fingerspelling hiragana chart by her knee stared up at her. She looked away from that too.

“Again? I didn’t say ‘can’t’, I said…” Megumi trailed off at the stubborn pinch she drilled into the corner of her cheek. He fell back on his palms, the book fluttering in his lap before he closed it in a soft thump. “Fine, let’s do clock times and numbers again when I get back. Then a question review.”

She nodded.

“Hey.”

She didn’t look up.

“It’s not just you.” Slowly, her eyes followed Megumi’s pointer fingers drawing beside each other like parallel contrails. Together. “Like it or not, we’re all in this. The Fushiguro-Hasa…” He paused. “The Fushiguro-Geto alliance has work to do. Got it? The books say this stuff is supposed to be hard.”

There. He said it. A slip of the tongue she didn’t blame him for, but it only served to harden the pit in her stomach. Still, Mimiko nodded hard, her bangs whisking her chin, and held a thumbs-up without looking. Under the curtain of her hair, Megumi’s knees shifted. He took her hands and rearranged them so her pinkies linked in a firm right angle.

“Don’t promise me, promise yourself. We’re learning this for you, remember? So you can talk all you want about your new mom and dad.”

Okaasan. Otousan. The names she’d once eagerly sought after picking now pricked her tongue like thorns, but Mimiko didn’t dare tell Megumi. Not with how many books he’d brought all this way and was now stuffing back into his randoseru, zipping up his pencil case and crumpling up scrap paper.

Sorry. Her fingers flicked from her nose bridge without thinking. She brightened a little at Megumi’s tiny approving nod, his fist held up for a tap.

He wasn’t a bad friend, Fushiguro Megumi. Even if he was a bit of a know-it-all.

…at least he was someone capable of having friends.

“Later,” he said by the door, shouldering on his randoseru. She engraved the sight of his two fingers splayed sideways into her head and mimicked it.

Later. And then, with her notebook: Good luck on your next soccer match.

“We’re gonna blaze through the quarterfinals, obviously.” The door swung half-shut, Megumi’s voice thumping downstairs. “Tsumiki, wrap up and clean out already.”

The signal. Mimiko grabbed her eraser that had shorn itself down a good centimetre or two and scrubbed away all of their conversation. It was easier than tearing out whole pages, shredding them into tiny strips, and having to explain why she’d need a new notebook already. She…she trusted Miharu-san and Seiji-san not to read what she threw away, but just in case.

A stoop to brush the eraser shavings into the trash bin by the window revealed Nanako out hunting for beetles in the backyard. Mimiko pressed her lips together, crinkling her notebook in uneasy waves. It’d ruin the spine glue faster, but it calmed her down other than nibbling her pencil.

They’d all agreed it’d be suspicious if they and the Fushiguros all stayed in their bedroom together for too long, and any other spots around the house might let them get overheard, so they had what Tsumiki declared was a ‘rotating study buddy system’. The Fushiguros studied up back in Tokyo. Mimiko did it under the covers with a flashlight and sticky notes Tsumiki left behind, since she was the only one who could draw hands and not produce potato lumps.

Nanako…studied with her. But Mimiko wasn’t an idiot, even if she’d thought Megumi was calling her one when he taught it to her as their first sign language word and bristled.

“So you can stick it to that baseball twerp next time you see him,” was his reasoning behind the book he’d grabbed to shield himself from the eraser she chucked at him.

She wasn’t an idiot. Nanako hadn’t been the same after the ruined town trip, but this was different from that time with the lemon store lady, when she’d run off and Miharu-san had biked with Mimiko on a mamachari up and down all over the place only to find her with Niisama under trees lined with fireflies. Different from the worries about Mito dragging its heels too.

Folding up the fingerspelling chart in hurried lines, Mimiko left the window to duck inside her cubby filled with pillows, soft toys, and a floating shelf Seiji-san had almost hammered his thumb black-and-blue to put in place.

Megumi’s hushed voice the visit after their town trip, elbowing his way inside with his randoseru almost bursting, drifted back to her.

“—and this one’s for everyday vocabulary. But you can’t keep these overnight.”

No. I want to study.

Megumi had given her a skeptical look. Mimiko had stared back. He frowned and rummaged inside his randoseru, pulling out a thick glossy book with many colour tabs.

“Fine. You can have this one. But—” He’d held the pocket dictionary out of reach before handing it over, his voice pitching lower in that awkward way of his. “I…borrowed it from my best friend’s big brother, Junichiro-niisan.” Another name in that faraway Tokyo world, the one responsible for the idea springing in Megumi’s head from a passing glance at a bookshelf in the first place. “He wants to study languages in uni, so it’s for high schoolers. Don’t lose it.”

Now, Mimiko stashed the square book by the wall of her cubby, where Tsumiki’s sticky notes spread their peach and gold wings. Miharu-san always let her know before she cleaned her cubby so Mimiko could rescue her random rocks, pressed leaves, polished twigs, and other odds and ends she retrieved on the way back from Niisama’s lessons. The sign language study tools would be safe.

Fushiguro Megumi was amazing too. Studying was hard. Teaching looked like it was even harder. Yet Seiji-san, day in and day out, had been tirelessly doing this for all kinds of subjects. To catch them up and keep them going through six whole grades they never had to wear proper uniforms for or sit in a bustling, nerve-wracking classroom with wooden sliding doors to endure.

The thought just made the shawl of shame tighten itself like a spider web around her shoulders, her feet buried in wet mud up to the ankles.

Pinning up a gauzy frilled bug blanket over the sign language wall in one last cover-up, Mimiko scrambled out of her cubby just in time for Seiji-san to suddenly swing the bedroom door open. She fought off the urge to check behind her, make sure she’d hidden everything perfectly, and kept her hands behind her back.

“...wrong door.” Scratching his head, Seiji-san was already swivelling down the hall to his and Miharu-san’s room, distractedly untying his painter’s smock as he went and leaning over the banister. “Tsumiki, three of the gaiken are dry now, so I set them aside. Megumi-kun, leave the tanzaku by their respective furin so I don’t get them mixed up again. I’ll poke the holes to hang them from.”

A string of mixed replies flew up. Mimiko hovered by the doorway, watching Seiji-san round the steps again, this time with a light cotton jacket tugged on. He put his hair in a little ponytail when he went out more often.

“Gojo-kun’s picking them up at the station.” Seiji-san paused with his head level to the floor, a funny habit of his so she could look down at him for once. “Coming? It’ll be good homework.”

That…wasn’t part of the plan. She could study more signs if she stayed. But Miharu-san was still gardening, Nanako prying apart bush after brush and waddling from squat to squat on a beetle hunt Mimiko was always part of, but not this time. Not since Gima Kousuke had relegated her to the sidelines, though it’d turned out no one tattled after all and Miharu-san hadn’t known a thing when she tutted over a couple splinters she’d discovered on Megumi’s hands.

“We climbed a tree on our way back,” Nanako had lied. “My fault.”

It was normally easier to pull teeth than have her sister admit anything that easily.

Okay, Mimiko wrote. I’ll spot train lines.

Standing behind the yellow gridded line, she soaked up sunlight rectangles between the departing train cars, her fingers curled in a paw of farewell. Tsumiki waved hard through the door window, Megumi’s hair mashed under Gojo-niisan’s teasing hand until they were whisked away down packed gravel and golden rails. Niisama hadn’t come today again, but it was probably for the better; he didn’t know about their sign language secret either, and Mimiko wasn’t sure she could hide it if his knowing smile picked up on her fidgeting. It was already a miracle Miharu-san hadn’t chided her for chipping her nails.

Mimiko turned on a brisk heel with a determined breath, doing her best to keep up with Seiji-san during rush hour without having to hold his hand. A flock of birds crested by the dark green shadow of the mountains, stealing her eyes and immediately crashing her into someone.

“Ah, excuse me…!” An old man, hunched over with his mouth parted in friendly confusion. Mimiko co*cked her head from her bow, and he unfolded a crinkled map, pointing to names she realized in a prick of pride she knew at a glance. “Young miss, would you happen to know which line goes to Mito? My grandson lives over there, but I texted my wife and she says I’ve got off at the wrong station…”

Mito. That capital city. Mimiko snapped her bag open and rooted around for her notebook, scribbling down the directions easily. She held them out.

The old man tugged on his cap, his mouth furrowing as he squinted, then chuckled. “Hold on, I’ve got my troublesome glasses on me somewhere!” He patted himself down and slid on a pair of ancient frames, Mimiko shifting from foot to foot as she held up her notebook against a steady disembarking swarm. “Let’s see, let’s see, these eyes aren’t what they used to be…”

“From this line, you have to take a connecting train. The one leaving now will take you there.” Seiji-san’s arm crossed overhead to draw out a quick line on her notebook, the old man thanking him generously before hurrying off. He handed Mimiko her notebook back.

It was a silent defeat. She had to latch onto his belt and huddle like a penguin chick just to survive; the Tokyo end of the rush hour had to be insane. The walk back had her twisting her bag strap enough to fray the pad over her shoulder, her feet lining ahead of each other to walk the curb. Her shadow was short next to Seiji-san’s, so short and unhelpful, his little ponytail ruffled by the breeze.

“You did good, helping that ojiisan out. He caught his train in time thanks to us both.”

She stretched her gums around her best rehearsed smile, chewing on her hair when it caught on her lip.

“You did good,” Seiji-san repeated, teasing the strands away, “but next time we’ll hold hands.” He went on at her head shake. “Miharu won’t let me hear the end of it if you get swept away.”

Mimiko sank her shoulders. She nodded and looked away again.

Megumi had taught her how to say idiot in sign first, followed by the signs for Okaasan, Otousan, sister, and brother. They were all simple enough. Yet between the pages he had them secretly copy down, his and Nanako’s heads crooked together and their pencils fighting for space while Tsumiki helped Mimiko practice mouthing, a tapeworm of guilt had found its way within her, burrowing deeper each time she stole a glance up at Seiji-san’s loose jacket flaps outlined by the valley’s sun.

Tsumiki said a goal for doing anything was important, but the road Megumi was tugging her along was a tunnel of indistinct sounds and shapes that emerged into a world Mimiko had trouble imagining, save for one wish. She already knew what she wanted to sign to Seiji-san and Miharu-san.

But her fingers weren’t enough. She wasn’t enough. She shouldn’t have to use her hands or her notebook to talk in the first place—

A fish tray-packed motorbike whizzed by, its engine rumbling fast and low, and Seiji-san’s arm was large enough to drape a cotton canvas over the sky, tucking her close until it passed.

…it felt different from when Gojo-niisan had walked on the outside of the road on their hiking adventure. When Mimiko’s shoe laces had come undone, he’d walked backwards in wide, leisurely lopes. Not stopping fully, not leaving her behind either.

Seiji-san bent to tie her laces for her, nice and firm.

“Tired?” he asked. “Want a ride?”

Will your back be okay?

“Just this once.”

Skepticism fading, Mimiko felt her chin slump into a nod. If she wanted to tell that elderly man where Mito was, she’d have to pray he had better eyes no matter how neat and big her handwriting was.

…she couldn’t even remember the sound of herself talking, back when it had come along willingly, before the long days in the cage. Maybe it had been bright and sweet like Tsumiki’s. Maybe blunt and smart like Megumi’s. Maybe tough and stubborn like Nanako’s.

She hadn’t overheard too much of what Hayashi-sensei had to say about the voice she didn’t have; phrases over a few evening phone calls like “speech therapy”, “a good contact in that field”, and “permanent silence isn’t harmful” floated around. Seiji-san and Miharu-san had brought it up a few times when it was time to hand in their colour therapy homework, at traffic lights and ticking car signals.

They didn’t mind.

But Gima Kousuke and his friends had.

They understood her.

But Gima Kousuke and his friends hadn’t.

How many more might turn out like him once the adoption finally came through? Their neighbours were always so nice whenever they talked to Miharu-san in the street or behind their gates, but would they be the same if Geto Mimiko walked up to them by herself with vegetable deliveries, only her notebook offered and her pencil praying they answered kindly?

And Mimiko herself aside, what would…they think of…Miharu-san? Having an adopted daughter like her? Mimiko would have a normal voice, after all, if she hadn’t been chased and chased in the plunging dark and whipping trees because of a noose doll that appeared one ominous day.

All because she was a Hasaba.

“...oh, it’s Osaki-san.” Mimiko jerked free from her thoughts to find Seiji-san slowing, her legs tucked up under his elbows. By their house gate, a young woman in a grey pencil skirt and a shoulder-length bob cut had a thick clipboard out, talking animatedly with Miharu-san in her sun visor hat and garden gloves. Nanako stood gripping a pair of heavy buckets full of spindly weeds, her eyes latching onto Mimiko’s from afar before flicking away. “She grew up a lot after coming back from university.”

No amount of botched sign language practice could explain the stiffness that had turned Mimiko’s sister into wood. If Mimiko had tried to be bigger in the train station, Nanako was shrinking herself like a raccoon dog pup lost in the woods, her shoulders awkwardly held, her gaze bouncing between the two women. Something was going on.

“Osaki-san’s from the women’s neighbourhood committee,” Seiji-san murmured his answer to a question Mimiko hadn’t written. “Miharu’s chilled tea was a firm favourite in their meetings.”

Was.

“Then I’ll write you both down as volunteers,” Osaki-san was saying as they approached, her pen moving in chipper, elegant flicks that made Mimiko envious. “Oh, Seiji-san! It’s been a while! You know—”

“I’m not painting anything for Taniguchi-kun to hang on the meeting room wall again,” came the blunt response, but there was a warm twinge to Seiji-san’s voice when both Miharu-san and Osaki-san burst into laughter that harmonized and he set Mimiko down behind the gate.

Her doll’s button eyes gazed up at her from its warm belly, its bristly noose rope coiled. Mimiko snapped the flap shut in immediate habit and hugged it, joining Nanako by the side of the house to look on as the three adults stood around. Catchup talk. Another grownup topic.

If Miharu-san’s face wasn’t as full of joy, it would’ve been easier to ignore.

“It’s the festival preparations.” The wind almost snatched away Nanako’s murmur, her gaze aglow with the setting sun as it latched onto Mimiko with a sudden determination like she hadn’t been off all day, then fixed itself to her dirty fingernails. Tsumiki would need to gloss them nicely. “Mimiko, that woman says the entire town’s pitching in. There’s going to be games and food stalls and lanterns and fireworks that’ll light up the whole valley.” Her thumb drew up to her mouth to get nibbled at. “It’s happening one week from now.”

…oh?

Standing with a mixing bowl in her hands and an oversized T worn as a makeshift apron, Mimiko let her gaze sketch an impatient line from Megumi, climbing on a chair he’d dragged to open some cupboards, to Nanako, who was peeling open a packet of pre-cut pork she’d specifically convinced Miharu-san to buy the other day, and finally to Tsumiki, who was very carefully heating up a pan of oil in small twists of the stove knob.

The recipe for omusoba Tsumiki had written out in cute handwriting hung on the fridge, bearing witness to their shushed movements and elbowed ribs as they scurried about. A surprise, a distraction, an excuse to cover up their sign language sessions.

Her notebook’s pages, pinned taut under her fingertips, ambushed her sign tutor.

“The annual summer festival…?” Jumping down, Megumi wrenched open a mayonnaise jar in a loud pop, Mimiko following him back and forth with her notebook held up. “We didn’t know you guys existed last year, so I dunno how it goes over here.” He was kicked in the foot by Tsumiki heaving up a colander, her eyes wide and sparkling.

“And it’s really happening here? With fireworks and goldfish scooping and candied apples?”

Yes. But we haven’t, Mimiko’s pencil moved faster than she could flip to a new page, gone to any before. I heard the summer ones are extra special, but there are winter and fall ones too. They’re hiring a group of taiko drummers to come and practice tomorrow.

All they’d known of any sort of festival was distant booms and scatters of light outside the house, but Miharu-san and Seiji-san had acted like the valley was another world. No, it had been. Now both worlds were overlapping with phone calls Seiji-san took with his hair still damp and Miharu-san cooking up a storm she packed into plastic lunch boxes for familiar and unfamiliar faces with towel-topped shoulders in the front door. Chores were run through at a dizzying pace, like the air of the house itself was drumming its feet in an eager, ushering beat, the bathwater gushing and the engawa doors sliding and the steps creaking.

It was…a late summer song loud enough covering her ears and eyes against it was almost impossible. Not as bad as prying her feet forward across the muddy pages of sign language, but Mimiko found herself nosily sticking her head over Seiji-san’s art office banister every time a neighbour dropped by to give updates. Osaki-san came for tea and chats almost every afternoon; ducking out of sight only worked for so long, so eavesdropping was the fastest way to figure out when she could escape and pull Nanako by the arm to flip through the pocket dictionary Megumi had lent her.

In the process, she’d learned quite a bit. Nothing she hadn’t already shared with Nanako washing vegetables by the sink, her short hair messily tucked in a faded cap Tsumiki had perkily tugged on backwards. To reclaim baseball, she said. Mimiko gave up catching her sister’s eye.

“Us neither,” Megumi was saying, and she jumped back into the conversation with a doubting twist to her lips. “Really. The ones in Tokyo are crazy loud. Sometimes they even shut down streets and stuff for parades, so it’s super crowded. Can’t go without an adult or you might get trampled.” Mimiko clamped her hand over a shudder of gooseflesh, and he shrugged. “So we stick to watching from our place. Great view.”

Tsumiki set a few eggs down on a cloth so they wouldn’t roll. “Yep, yep! There’s park viewing too, but if you don’t snag a good spot early, you can’t see the fireworks…”

“Or worse, if you can’t come at all.” Megumi peeled the mayonnaise jar seal in a soft rasp. “What’s next in the recipe?”

The endless racket of insects crying under the summer’s heat and the heavy globs of oil gurgling out into a heavy frying pan that had taken Megumi with some cursed energy to heft spoke enough. There went any tiny embers of hope for Niisama coming in time, but he’d be sure to ask about it later.

“We’ve been turned into a restaurant delivery store,” Nanako suddenly informed a cutting board she was scrubbing dry. “We’ve been getting fruits from the neighbours a lot too. Strawberries, blueberries, pears, grapes.”

Tsumiki clapped softly. “That sounds yummy!”

Nanako crumpled the dish towel with a twitch of her nose. “It’s noisy.”

Noisy but lively, Mimiko wanted to correct. Miharu-san sang to herself as she chopped and sliced and stirred. The kitchen seemed so quiet in the rare times she ran down for a grocery list that was twice as long. Like now. They were committing a necessary type of trespassing; Seiji-san was dozing off in his art office down the hall.

OMUSOBA FOR SUGURU-NII(SAMA), read the top of the recipe. Nanako pulled out a knife from the knife block, her and Megumi’s heads crooked over the shiny blade as she tried to get a grip on a giant cabbage leaf. Mimiko quietly picked an onion to peel on the side.

“You’ve gotta make a paw shape. A paw. Or you’re gonna cut yourself.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“Won’t.”

She was tapped on the shoulder.

“Mimiko-chan, has Obasan mentioned what kind of festival foods there’s going to be? We always just get doggy bag souvenirs from Satoru-nii, so I want to try something fresh like a choco banana! Or maybe hot grilled squid…” Tsumiki leaned against the counter with a dreamy smile. She suddenly gasped. “Oh, but we’re probably going to miss most of it…! I forgot, Megumi and I have a lot of stuff lined up this week. One of my friends, Ran-chan, I promised her before summer started—”

A loud pop made everyone flinch, not just Mimiko. The frying pan full of bubbling oil was ready.

So was the bad news.

With everyone hovering behind Tsumiki’s outstretched arm as she carefully prodded at the pork pieces, a crucial lesson about piano recitals was held and hijacked by Megumi throwing in club events.

Is it long? Mimiko asked carefully. The recital.

“I don’t think so? I’m just going with Maeda-chan to cheer on Ran-chan, but my club has an origami contest the day right after. And then—”

Megumi beat the eggs he’d smashed into a bowl with a fisted fork. “Jomei and Hoshi invited me on a camping trip if we win the tournament. Their parents said they’re fine with it. I’m going so I’ll win.” He held Mimiko’s stare as she took up her turn to beat the eggs. “You still gotta study while I’m gone. No slacking.” She nodded hard. “I’m gonna quiz you when I get back.” Another nod.

“Don’t get bitten, city boy,” Nanako edged out over the crunch of an onion she was pressing down hard to chop with the knife, using her palm to smack the blade down in wedges. “By a snake.”

“I’ll just dropkick it. One of my shikigami’s a snake, you know.”

“Have you tamed it yet?”

“No.”

He’ll be careful, Mimiko assured her sister, squeezing her pencil when Nanako threw her a single passing nod and was dragged into a staring contest with Megumi with ease. Mimiko was left to tug on Tsumiki’s sleeve again, trying to keep her notebook from getting speckled too much by oil. When will you both be back?

“Let’s see…a week at the most, I guess? There’s a lot of playdates before school starts up again.” Tsumiki’s sheepish smile only made Mimiko’s stomach sink to her toes even more, her voice pitching in a whisper. “Don’t worry, I’m still gonna learn…more…sign language!” A spiral of her pointer fingers together, a stack of wide pinches, and a grasp of the fist by the head. “Oh, and I’m basically done with the family tree, but you absolutely can’t peek until Megumi and I add the finishing touches when we get back— eep! Megumi, don’t add the veggies all at once!”

The pan started smoking. Nanako fanned hard with a dish towel on a chair Mimiko pushed over before Tsumiki bravely twisted the temperature down. Everyone either sagged or wiped their foreheads in unison.

“It’s the gas stove’s fault. Our old apartment had one. I dunno how Suguru and Satoru did it.” Megumi dripped clumpy egg yolk off his fork, smearing out a shell shard with his fingertip. “...we burnt frozen pancakes once though, Tsumiki, right? There was smoke everywhere. Suguru yelled at him.”

“No, no, it was french toast! I like our penthouse stove way better—wait, wait, Nanako-chan,” Tsumiki spun with a water pitcher, “does the recipe say to add the noodles and then the water or the water and the noodles!? I forgot!”

“It—it says noodles first.” Nanako twisted with her nails scratching against plastic, the packet of yakisoba noodles exploding all over the place when Mimiko tried to pull her back too late. The floor was showered in dry, stiff yellow blocks. Tsumiki accidentally stepped on one.

“It’s still edible,” Megumi insisted in the quiet frenzy of picking all the scattered pieces up. “Five second rule. Suguru’s got a strong gut.”

The five second rule couldn’t save them from an unexpected arrival. Mimiko considered hiding herself in a cupboard when the front door swung open, Megumi motioning for Tsumiki to flip the uncooked omusoba faster and Nanako grabbing a chair as soon as Gojo-niisan’s bickering trailed through the house.

“—pscht, the ossan doesn’t count. Throw him out the equation—throw him out the window and the equation. I’ve never met a problem I couldn’t RGB my way out of.”

“R-G-B?”

“Red, Green, Blue! Green is for money.”

Even from her spot frantically setting up the table, Mimiko could imagine the unimpressed flat lines Niisama’s eyes turned into. “Well, we can’t all be millionaires—”

A scandalized gasp. “I’m at least in the top twenty wealthiest in the nation, what do you take me for?”

“And word spreads fast in a small town like this so no, you may not bribe the Mito Family Court.”

“But how much you want to bet they’ve got contacts over in the Tokyo Family Court?”

Mito. She hadn’t forgotten the name of the capital one bit, but between the secret sign language practice and chores they helped Miharu-san out with—no, why was Gojo-niisan of all people yammering about it again? Mimiko squeezed the salt and pepper shakers, jolting when Nanako tugged her arm.

“We present it at the same time,” she mouthed, giving Mimiko no time before she pulled both their makeshift aprons off and bundled the oil scent-doused shirts to Megumi, who chucked them in a random basket, snagged a pair of utensils, and slammed the drawer on his thumb, waving off Tsumiki’s worried flutter as he limped over to line up by the table.

“I’m not betting, Satoru.” There came the rhythmic sounds of Niisama undoing the clasps on his jika-tabi and setting down his keys and two phones. “Stop pouting. Stop scowling. Stop batting your eyes,” he was laughing now, “you can’t make me bet under my own roof—”

“You are no fun lately, you know that? Yaga-gakucho’s new dolls have more flexibility! Code-switch a little more, throw aside that perfect Buddha face you always got around your little ducklings and…”

Gojo-niisan trailed off as he padded into the kitchen, his jacket hooked over his shoulder and a blue popsicle waving in his hand. The grin he adopted was electric. Nanako tightened her grip on the chair she was clearly intending to throw in his way or at his knees.

“Oh Suguru~ Guess what your cute little girls got up to? And boy, Gumi, drop that side-eye, we don’t discriminate.”

“It’s not for you,” Nanako threw out, Mimiko nodding viciously beside her before squeezing her fingers. Then she threw them up in the only insult she knew.

Idiot.

Tsumiki’s eyes flew wide, Megumi skidding over to stand beside Mimiko and Nanako with folded arms. His poor thumb was turning purple.

“Suguru, sit,” he commanded. Niisama smothered an incredulous laugh and took a seat in the chair Nanako pulled out for him. He didn’t laugh when Tsumiki served the jiggly, lopsided omusoba on a plate. Mimiko squirted a healthy amount of ketchup.

“So this was your grand plan all along, huh? No wonder you’ve been huddling around scheming together with Gumi and Miki.” Gojo-niisan just wouldn’t keep his voice down for some reason, Mimiko clenching a fist behind her back when she heard Seiji-san stir in his office and hit his head somewhere. At least their nemesis was right about the wrong thing. “Whip up a masterclass meal while me and Suguru have been hoofing it across the nation, surviving off popsicles and crepes? And in the festival season no less?”

He started rummaging in the fridge again and poured himself chilled tea from the one pitcher that wasn’t meant to go out to the town volunteers, even though Miharu-san had forgotten to label them yet. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t raised the pitcher so high.

“I’m so hurt. Where’s my reward, huh, Suguru?”

There was a devilish twinkle in his eye. And that was certainly a subtle wink just now…

Icy mortification drenched Mimiko from head to toe. He was covering for them. Their nemesis now their ally, Niisama none the wiser.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Niisama said slowly, examining the omusoba from various angles with the aid of the spoon Tsumiki helpfully offered. He cut the omusoba across the top and the yakisoba noodles fell out in a wet plop.

He chewed. And chewed some more. And some more.

He made a smile, blinking aside a stray strand of his hair that fell down.

“It’s good.”

“How good?” Nanako leaned on her palms. Mimiko hugged herself. Megumi stared at Niisama’s throat.

“Swallow,” he commanded severely.

Niisama swallowed. “It’s good,” he repeated with the same stubborn smile that gave nothing away.

Gojo-niisan laughed in his throat and twisted his way out the doorway, steering Seiji-san off with an arm over his shoulders and an almost overflowing mug of tea in the corner of Mimiko’s eye.

Smothering her disdain, she held up her notebook. You aren’t going to finish it?

Niisama continued to stare down at the omusoba, his spoon loosely held. “...I think I’ll wrap it up. And take it back to-to Tokyo.”

“Suguru-nii, you just stuttered.” Tsumiki held her chin.

“What?” A bright smile. “I…I didn’t.”

“You just did it again.” Megumi narrowed his eyes.

Nanako tightened her fists on her shorts. “You,” she accused, “don’t like it.”

“No, no! It’s just…” Niisama gazed at the omusoba long enough they all joined in, their heads tipped one way, then the other. “Strong, I guess?”

Megumi immediately hauled them off to the side, muttering behind his hand into Tsumiki’s ear. “How can eggs be strong? I told you we should’ve put less salt—”

“Megumi-kun what happened to your thumb.”

“It got dyed. With grape juice.”

We don’t have grape juice. Mimiko instantly sold Megumi out, ignoring his scowl. Soccer didn’t need hands, but her sign tutor had to be in top shape. Elderly men and train directions aside, she could help out that much.

“It’s literally swelling, come over here—”

Mimiko lowered her notebook under her chin, watching the grumbling Fushiguro boy get forced into packing his thumb with an ice bag that Niisama apologized to Seiji-san for having to prepare and Gojo-niisan wrapped in a pink polka dot hankie he had for some reason. Niisama practically kicked him down the hill with the Fushiguros in toe in a whirlwind of scuffed sneakers and hot afternoon air.

“Don’t give Okaasan and Otousan too much trouble, alright?” Her big brother’s hand always felt warmer without its glove. “Thanks for the omusoba. I’ll take good care of it.”

Just like that, they were gone. No one to brazenly take the blame if something like the ruined town trip happened again, no one who knew their sign language secret, no one to share her mixed feelings about the upcoming hum of the festival that was infecting their whole neighbourhood.

It was just her behind the gate and Nanako, who’d already spun on a heel to head back inside with Seiji-san before Mimiko could catch her eye. Niisama had always said he saw past their jujutsu. That was why he trained them so sparsely but so carefully. And, when it came to Miharu-san and Seiji-san, they…were just girls.

Two Geto girls. Two Geto sisters. Two Geto daughters. Two…Hasabas.

That was a problem.

Seiji-san helping them clean up without a word only hammered home the fact that cooking was hard and they’d messed it up, even with Tsumiki and Megumi’s help. How did Miharu-san do it three times a day, every day, feeding four mouths? She had to have planted extra in her vegetable garden ever since Mimiko and Nanako had come along, hadn’t she? And even more than that since there were still leftovers to happily give to the neighbours.

How many changes had been forced into existence because of them?

That guilty tapeworm found a fresh part of her body to eat away at when Miharu-san came back with her arms laden with grocery bags, sweat twinkling on her brow, and wisps breaking free of her kerchief, and burst into bewildered chuckles at the sight of Mimiko and Nanako furiously scrubbing her kitchen top to bottom. She listened to Seiji-san’s explanation behind a broom and laughed even harder once she’d smacked him with a newspaper.

“Don’t leave our daughters alone in the kitchen, you silly man!” And then to them: “I’m sure Ru-chan appreciated it, but don’t try to cook again without either of us around. It’s dangerous. Your chore lists are all done already, aren’t they? Come on, go upstairs and get ready for your bath.” And then to Seiji-san again: “Seiji, I’m officially delegating you to help out with setting up the game stands later, alright? They need some extra arms to set up the shooting gallery games and yo-yo fishing, and poor Isobe-san threw out his back just the other day—”

Seiji-san’s voice floated over the steps Mimiko took her time climbing, Nanako’s shoulders solid and hunched ahead of her. “It’s because he refuses to leave things to his grandsons. He should be more like Bando-san.”

“Well, he wants to impress Kamiya-san, so…”

“At his age?”

“Seiji,” Miharu-san laughed. “I owe it to Osaki-san to lessen headaches, not add them, alright? Just because I’m not part of the committee, doesn’t mean I can slack off!”

“Gima-san can do that all by himself. His grandson has nothing better to do. You should ask Suguru to get Megumi-kun to tutor him. Wasn’t he in trouble with his science grades last semester?”

They had no idea. Mimiko stilled where she was pulling out towels from the closet, her fingertips fidgeting with their fluffy corners. They didn’t need to know, and she imagined them like two pleasant storks wading about a pond, their long wings settled comfortably.

The tapeworm dug itself deeper.

Under her own bare feet, there was sticky mud, drifting fingerspelling, an old man she couldn’t properly help, and a baseball game that never came. Over her head, a sky that would bear witness to fireworks that would be more beautiful if she didn’t have to worry about her last name.

little

“It’s not like you’re particularly well-learned either, you know. At that age…”

miss

“I’m feeling very insulted, you know. I also won a preservation award, but it was in middle school for a riverside plant species—I have proof, Miharu, that I wasn’t always a sloth. Don’t laugh.”

“Sorry, sorry, I just can’t…!”

Geto

The taunting words had been engraved deeper than any sign Megumi had learned with her.

Bathtime was horribly, horribly quiet.

How to ask questions in sign was something that hadn’t settled well in her head yet, her fingers fumbling over the water to send choppy waves between their knees. Miharu-san was just down the hall, the door cracked ajar to the sounds of her humming and sorting tea leaves.

Mimiko tried anyway. There was normally nothing that had her floundering, no charades that Nanako wouldn’t pick up right away. Before Megumi’s pocket dictionary, before her notebook, before Seiji-san had first taught her to write, the caramel-haired girl in front of her had been her first translator between Mimiko and the world.

Mimiko splashed the water and waved her hand hard until Nanako looked up, then mimed swinging a bat.

Was it Gima Kousuke?

No. Nanako’s brows knitted together.

Scattered droplets like popping oil, Mimiko sucking on her teeth.

Was it the failed omusoba?

No. She twisted her mouth and looked away.

Was it Mito far, far away, like her hands flying up high until they came down again, or all of those things, everything like a big circle traced by her palms—

A loud splash. Nanako dropped Mimiko’s arm, turning away her cheek ruddy from the hot steam.

“We should ask Miharu-san to get us kid knives,” she muttered. “To help with the cooking.”

The silence stretched soggy and slack between them like a poorly wrung towel.

Mimiko hunched her shoulders, then shook her head hard enough her bangs whipped her cheeks and sloshed forward.

Her fingertip drove into the hard bone over her heart, her head sharply co*cked.

Fine. Was it her, who’d been the catalyst for the baseball game that never was? Had Nanako secretly wanted to play with Gima Kousuke after all, her hard layers stripped like tree bark, and it was Mimiko’s fault for getting in the way—

Nanako pinned her chin over her knees, water beading off her stringy hair.

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped at the wall, and Mimiko had her answer in a harsh huff.

Ha-sa-ba, Tsumiki had slowly finger spelt for her, moving onto Ge-to so easily. The cheery Fushiguro girl believed in the meaning of that change. Mimiko couldn’t anymore. She was sure Nanako couldn’t either.

Turning her back to her sister, Mimiko traced her fingertips over the bath water, droplets plinking on the disturbed surface. It wasn’t the steam that stung her eyes and transformed her reflection into something hideous but recognizable. She tried to slap it away, water spraying her chin. Yes, she wanted to be a Geto. She wanted to leave Hasaba behind, but—

But if it wasn’t for her and her voicelessness, would Seiji-san be able to keep sketching and painting without looking up painstakingly to read her notebook? Would Miharu-san be able to go upstairs first when the phone from Tokyo rang and someone had to be there to patiently pass along what Mimiko had to say?

I want, she signed desperately without looking up, grasping at Megumi’s hand shapes and Tsumiki’s sticky notes like the fading heat of their bath, a good festival.

Liar. She wanted so much more, too scared to chase the sentence she’d asked Megumi to put at the top of their learning list, and was all the guiltier for it.

She didn’t look up when Nanako left the bath first.

In a small pinch of mercy, the last several days leading up to the festival were busy enough they drove Mimiko right out of her silent misery like a burly stray cat chasing a frantic house mouse.

She took to both her chores and the ones Nanako suddenly seemed to be sloppier at even more, even faster. She scrubbed the bathroom top to bottom, fought to dry the dishes no matter how much Miharu-san laughingly protested, and hung up the laundry in great tosses over the clotheslines. She pulled weeds until her nails were dirty right through the gloves and stood on stools to pass Seiji-san nails to fix the wall garden lattice. She faced down the engawa with tucked-up shorts, braced on her toes, and kicked off to wipe the floor down in fast thumps, the cicada wailing and the clouds luminous in their bubbly bellies stacked so high.

In the corner of her eye and behind her back, Nanako didn’t climb trees anymore. Mimiko practiced sign language by herself under her blanket until her fingers were sore around breakfast’s chopsticks and she lied through the teeth of her pencil’s ragged tip that it was from chores.

“You don’t have to do so many, you know.” Miharu-san neatened up her bangs, but Mimiko shook her head around her mouthful.

“Mimiko-chan, Nanako-chan! Guess what!?” Tsumiki called them twice on the telephone. She’d gotten second place in the origami contest because she’d made a mistake when someone burst into the clubroom with news. Megumi now had a golden trophy and a medal on his bedroom shelf. “He’s packing all his stuff tonight. He won’t let me tag along at all even if I wanted to! How’s the festival going?”

Busy. Mimiko force-fed the first word in her notebook for Nanako to pass over. She gripped her pencil sharpener when Nanako didn’t add the other words. But fun.

“Are you practicing your sign?” Megumi’s voice elbowed its way through Tsumiki’s giggles. “I’m gonna ask Junichiro-niisan for more tips on the camping trip, so get ready.”

“She is,” Nanako reported, then added sharply, “You’re the slacker, city boy,” when she didn’t share the phone with Mimiko and Megumi’s retort was lost.

Mimiko didn’t let her in her cubby after that, but between the drawn curtains she watched her sister stalk back and forth between homework lessons that were shortened the more the town came alive each night, her hands creating good morning and good evening. Seiji-san slid open the doors of his office and the engawa at twilight to sketch, circling and putting arrows where things would happen.

“The fireworks will come over the mountain like aurora borealis,” he told Mimiko, her noose doll in her lap by his side. From the kitchen came the faint chops of Nanako’s stubborn knife work under Miharu-san’s supervision, a bug bandaid on Mimiko’s pinkie from a stray slice that had sent her ushered right out. “The other towns have their own festivals going on too, so Taniguchi-kun…our mayor, organized things carefully.”

Mimiko rippled her fingers, willing them not to slip up again. Seiji-san’s smile was nestled in his palm pressed to a cheek, his pencil twiddled.

“Yes. A cascading light show. He might get a painting out of me after all.”

Breath catching, Mimiko twisted to grab her notebook and a couple coloured pencils, make her own auroras and copy Megumi’s documentary DVDs to ward it off, when her elbow rammed into a stack of teetering newspapers. Usually they were tied, but these ones came toppling down in a crinkly flood she couldn’t stop.

It fell right towards the Fushiguro family tree tucked off by the side, the cloth falling over Tsumiki and Megumi’s mysterious contraption that was both strange and skeletal.

Mimiko’s breath lodged itself in her throat. The bottom of her ribs stung where she’d belly-flopped on the floor, but a loud thump had her jolting in surprise. Seiji-san had tripped trying to catch her. They lay side by side, identically clumsy, both their arms stretched out. But he had caught the family tree just in time, bracing it back against the wall in muffled jingles.

The cloth slipped off just as Seiji-san’s hand, fingertips muddy with colour that looked like a spectrum of grey in the twilight, covered her eyes.

“No peeking,” he said as he fixed it, his voice a playful warmth. Father-like even though he wasn’t being nagged. “Tsumiki’s orders. You okay?”

She nodded. Her noose doll was plopped back on her lap, Seiji-san expertly winding the bristly rope around her wrist like it didn’t prick him at all, and they went back to watching the valley together.

“It would be nice,” Seiji-san murmured over her head, “if Suguru could see this with us.”

The guilty tapeworm writhed in her gut.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

Okaasan, Otousan, brother.

Family.

Mimiko wished she’d asked Megumi before he went on his camping trip how to sign festival.

The third most momentous day of Mimiko’s life arrived when she, and Nanako by her side for once since they usually cleaned opposite ends, stumbled wiping down the engawa. A tripped foot, a tipped bucket, and a mighty splash that left their shorts drenched and Seiji-san’s messy head peering out of his art office.

Nanako stuffed her bandaid-splattered fingers into her overalls pockets, looking off pointedly. Her hair had grown just a little at the ends, bright green and yellow clips in charge of the more unruly fringe Miharu-san was trimming to encourage it to grow back to matching Mimiko and her purple and silver clips.

The first momentous day had been Niisama. The second had been the Fushiguros. Today—

“Let’s,” Seiji-san suggested once they were both dried off and equipped with water bottle sling bags, “head into town to help out. Yo-yo fishing and shooting gallery.”

“You don’t like labour.” Nanako screwed her bottle with a skeptical scrunch of her brows.

“I don’t.” Seiji-san scratched his neck with stained nails. “But…your mother will hound me otherwise, so…”

Mother. He said it so effortlessly, the same way Miharu-san casually slipped ‘daughters’ into breakfast and dinner conversations. The adoption papers didn’t dictate naming conventions, she explained cheerfully, so they might as well start now.

…how awful, the betrayal Mimiko was harbouring inside herself.

Instead of battling a glow of pride, she swallowed down her leapfrogging heart and stuck close to Nanako the whole way. Her sister’s face fixed itself in a permanent near-frown as they passed over nail boxes and hammers while strong men drank Miharu-san’s chilled tea and roared with laughter atop stepladders. They got candy from Bando-san and stopped for a platter of fresh watermelon slices from Endo-san, the bald melon shop man whom Seiji-san had an elaborate, expressive handshake with.

“We went to the same high school,” he said, examining a cheap electric handheld fan on the counter rack, and Mimiko almost swallowed her melon bite the wrong way. “Different town from here, though.”

“And yet this guy gets to keep all his hair!” Endo-san tsked around a toothpick over his shop’s buzzing AC, yanking Seiji-san’s stilted frame and messing up his tiny ponytail. “Mimiko-chan, Nanako-chan, let me tell you, your dad was a real lady killer in his youth—” He flipped Seiji-san’s bangs up, revealing tell-tale narrow purple eyes that shut with a sigh. “Every Valentine’s day, on the dot, he’d open up his locker to get a flood of letters…!”

“You received none, if I recall right.”

“Hey, I was too busy shouldering our glorious baseball team as ace, alright? We made it every year to the semifinals, but…!” Endo-san slapped his thigh and sighed hard, pouncing on Nanako when she tried to cram her entire melon slice into her mouth. “Ooh, Nanako-chan, pass me that styrofoam plate, quick, quick!” He took a huge mushy bite of watermelon and nearly choked, continuing, “Are you ready? I bet your dad’s never taught you this before!”

“For good reason,” Seiji-san muttered, but his twitching lips betrayed his folded arms. “Mimiko, don’t copy them.”

The move Mimiko witnessed then was called the gatling gun.

“Don’t tell your mother,” Endo-san hissed loudly after them, Mimiko hitting Nanako on the back now and then to help with her coughs. She was shrugged off when they passed by the Gima family’s mochi shop, one of many stores swapping out their counters to act as in-house stalls.

It was part of where the food amenities would be stationed along the long, broad river of the festival attractions, game stands its many creeks and sitting areas for the elderly its ponds. Right now its banks were transforming themselves from plywood and tarp to wooden roofs and grill baskets, bright banners in bold names hoisted up in boisterous cries.

Gima Kousuke was nowhere to be found.

At first, Mimiko kept her hands to her bag strap and Seiji-san’s belt, hooking on tight and keeping close. But her curiosity flitted from small inflatable pools Nanako was allowed to pump up with her foot to tiny toy stands that glittered as Mimiko wheeled them into place under Seiji-san’s instructions. She even got to keep a tiny fat keychain she recognized as a Pokemon, the toy seller laughingly waving off Seiji-san’s limited protests nonchalantly when Nanako got one too.

“I’ve got far too many anyway. Consider it on the house!”

So many free things. Their keychains were dropped in the famous doggy bag Tsumiki had talked about, then kept company by thumb-sized beckoning cats, oni stickers, and painted wooden folk dolls.

“Geto-san, aren’t you a bit too…” The limit was a Poke ball that stored marble candy. Gojo-niisan would’ve liked it, so Mimiko made sure to dislike it.

“No, I’m paying. And it’s for Endo-kun.”

On a break, Seiji-san forked another melon piece into his mouth straight from a tray of fresh green cubes Endo-san was handing out. They picked up right where they left off, Mimiko’s head swivelling between them.

“You didn’t listen to my advice. Nagai-san never liked buzz cuts.”

Endo-san nearly flooded his face red from how hard he’d accidentally tightened his bandana. “Don’t you bring that up now—!”

“She’s married now anyway.” Another bite, Seiji-san checking his phone. “She was a good class president. Certainly too good for the average sports grunge…no, you have to open it like this, don’t break it.” He showed Endo-san how to open the Pokeball. “Use it for your truck keys.”

“Hey, hey, do you have to be so vindictive!? It’s been over a decade! And what kind of a joke for a key container is this supposed to be—don’t walk away! Hey! ”

Seiji-san flipped his phone shut, ignoring Endo-san's squawks. “Mimiko, Nanako, let’s go. The fish truck arrived.”

Miharu-san was kneeling by a large tank of goldfish, flecks of orange and red gulping down bubbles under the blazing sun, a styrofoam container of steaming takoyaki in hand and her hair pinned up in a haphazard way that spoke of chubby toddler fingers getting to it.

“What do you think?” she asked Seiji-san’s bobbing cheeks, chuckling at his sharp nod. “I think I might try my hand at manning a stall! They need someone to stand in for a couple hours…Nanako-chan, Mimiko-chan, please, try some!”

It was delicious. So delicious Mimiko had to force herself to have only one, but Miharu-san gave her the whole container while she cheerfully greeted a group of elderly ladies holding up wrapped lunches and boxes of paper lanterns, several of them barking out gruff orders at the sheepish men setting up stalls and stringing up awnings. Flatbed trucks were unloaded like hard-working ants passing a line of sugar cube crumbs.

The valley was buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. And Mimiko…wasn’t afraid of it.

No, she was blowing up balloons with a fierce old lady with a big pair of lungs, rescued by Bando-san joining in with her jolly laugh and wrinkled handfuls of sour candy. Nanako carefully tossed rings out over a striped rod a few middle school girls moved around, hoodies tied around their checkered skirts and their nails painted in a kind of gloss Tsumiki’s play kit couldn’t hope to rival. Boys on bikes rolled up too, hands tucked behind heads and elbows driving into ribs when they passed the girls. They were then yelled at by the grandmothers to roll up their sleeves and quit playing around with the hit-the-target stands, and—

“I’ll tell on you to the mayor if the third-years set off firecrackers like last year.”

Seiji-san looked very cool with a toy rifle slung over his shoulders, his bangs carded back so his stare could pierce the middle school boys who either squawked, bowed, or scurried off in a cloud of dust.

“Geto-san, you should quit painting and take up a job at the station,” someone called, the others chortling from where they were unpacking boxes of stuffed prizes.

“He can’t do that! His back, his back.”

“So what? We have motorbikes these days! Just chase down the criminals like that, and—! Ouch, ouch, my hip…”

“Miharu-san, your hands are so talented…! You make them better than the actual chef!”

“The actual chef is right here. Stop trying to steal our dear Miharu-san for yourself!”

“Now, now, let’s all get along. Have a bit of sweets.”

“Bando-san, you’re hogging her daughter too!”

Miharu-san stilled, then smiled so much her cheeks looked like they’d hurt. “She sure is!”

Again. Daughter. Mimiko kept her gaze firmly on the polka dot balloon she was feeding a hose into, the cool rubber expanding against her palm. The nattering old lady was hushed and pulled aside in harsh whispers that would’ve been no better than Gima Kousuke’s bright grin and nonchalant taps of his bat.

Except—

“Goodness, who cares about that! She’s filling up those balloons better than any of you!” Bando-san, the old lady whom she’d shied away from and pedalled off with Tsumiki catching up before she could see what she was rummaging in her pocket. “Here, here, Mimiko-chan, was it? Take a break! You’re doing so well!”

Seiji-san disappeared under the triangle-edged awning of a shooting gallery game, and Mimiko fiddled on her forced break. Under her eyelashes, Nanako was warily sticking her hands under a fountain faucet. Her sister’s nails came out pink and glossy, two of the middle school girls high-fiving another before a boy charged out behind them with a dripping bag of goldfish and a roar. They squealed. Shrieked. Started chasing him around until they knocked over some crates and were all sentenced to setting up the goldfish pools

Maybe she imagined it, that sudden burst of conflict on Nanako’s face. But her sister staring down at the forest of her fingers was eclipsed by the shadow of Bando-san’s hand falling to pet Mimiko’s hair once, twice.

“Are you doing well? Shall we have some tea?”

Thank you, Mimiko wrote, holding her breath when Bando-san squinted to read her writing for a long time.

“Just bow, girl, and it’s all the same to me,” she chortled, pouring her a cup.

Mimiko nursed it for a long time.

The evening threw the longest shadows across the valley. The strung lanterns were lit, illuminating the streets in warm gold, and the stands started up their cooking for real once night fell.

And the world of the valley unfolded under her pencil’s scratches that couldn’t hope to mimic Seiji-san. Mimiko glanced up periodically from the clumsy drawing she’d started, her noose doll safe and sound in her satchel that she held close. She had a perfect view atop a stool pulled up next to the takoyaki stall Miharu-san was manning in a deft tie of a white apron and excited chatter with the middle-aged couple firing up the grill.

It was beautiful.

Yukata. So many yukata. The streams of festival goers were decorated in soft pastels and deep cools, uchiwa fans tucked into the backs of broad obi, geta sandals clacking eagerly from stall to stall and some tripping in a clatter to the mortified gasp of a parent and the shrieking laughter of friends. There were a t-shirts and tank tops and flip-flops too, wallets begged for to grab a mouth-watering taste of yakitori and kinchaku carelessly swung by their cords like the way Megumi had done to his tamagotchi in the backseat of a winter van bound for Tsukuba-san.

She caught a glimpse of Seiji-san briskly walking with his hands full of grilled potatoes, steaming mounds of brownish gold wrapped in foil, Nanako hot on his heels with fistfuls of paper scoopers to hand out for the goldfish games. A huge watermelon tucked under his arm, Endo-san was battling a wailing kid atop their parent’s shoulders trying to steal one more taiyaki than their older sister had bought. There was even Osaki-san nearby, her clipboard tucked under her arm to accept a cup of bubbly soda smugly poured by an eager kid who’d escaped helping out at a cotton candy stall that hung spun clouds of blue, pink, and green.

Darting swiftly from stall to stall, her arms laden with choco bananas that Tsumiki would have protested were too sugary, dango Niisamaa would have loved with matcha tea, and ringo ame that glistened a deep liquid red, Bando-san had a sharp gleam in her eye that Gojo-niisan would have teamed up with horribly.

The air was filled with the smoke of grills, the merry laughter of the town. A faint thunder trembled the water cup in Mimiko’s hand, running up through her feet and ringing in her ears.

All these non-sorcerers had names, lives, and smiles. It tingled her down to her fingertips.

“My, my, you look just like your father.” Miharu-san leaned over beside the sparks of the takoyaki grill Mimiko had forgotten to fan, her head haloed by the stall lanterns and her voice raised over the crowd. She chuckled at Mimiko’s deep flush. Mother-like even though she wasn’t nagging anyone, just like Tsumiki had said. “Can you hear the taiko drums? Taniguchi-kun just insisted we have a street performance. They’re over that way.”

She pointed, and Mimiko’s eyes drew up, up, up. The sky was still disappointingly black. No fireworks.

Night was pulling a blanket of stars overhead, and the hustle and bustle grew enough the streets became packed. But she still wasn’t scared yet. No one had pushed her notebook aside yet.

For the first time in days, she felt brave. Like her stork wings were finally unfolding.

I’m going to the bathroom, Mimiko wrote, snapping her notebook shut a little too fast. I can go by myself.

“Are you sure? It’s very busy. I can take a quick break…” Miharu-san glanced back at new customers arriving. Mimiko pressed her notebook against her stomach in a firm shake of her head, her flip-flops scraping backward. She didn’t meet Miharu-san’s searching eyes but caught her relenting smile. “There’s a row of portable toilets off by the end of the ring toss game stands down there. Be careful, alright? Don’t get lost.”

She almost signed again. I can do it, Nanako’s fingertips experimentally crossing from shoulder to shoulder and her face breaking into a sunny cheer when Megumi looked it up in his picture dictionary.

The same borrowed dictionary Mimiko couldn’t have helped smuggling into her satchel, its glossy weight thumping against her thigh as she slipped off, squeezing the strap in determination.

Hayashi-sensei would have given her so many animal stickers right now. The crowd full of ever-shifting yukata sleeves and tantalizing scents didn’t spook her. Her small size let her weave and squeeze through, ducking in quick apologies if she bumped into anyone, her eyes on the ground to track the lantern lights on either side of the packed street on her way back from the toilet.

She was doing this. She was doing this. She was doing this after all, as a Geto daughter. The festival had hundreds of people, and most of them probably didn’t even know who Miharu-san and Seiji-san were .

A loud pop and thunk stole her attention. It was one of the shooting gallery games, a pair of siblings under the striped awning. The game vendor chortled on his folding chair with a piggy bank next to him.

The shorter sibling yanked on her pushy pigtails, whining. “Aww, you missed again! Niichan, you suck!”

“Can’t you be a lil more motivating, Amaya?” The brother had to be a high schooler. Maybe around the same age as Niisama when he’d first opened their cage with a gentle, reassuring smile that so starkly contrasted his black uniform and messy half-bun, strands spilling around his shoulders under leering torchlight. The brother slapped down more coins, reloaded the toy rifle, and took aim again. “I’m seriously suffering right now…!”

“Yeah, ‘cause you suck!” The little sister was even shorter than Mimiko, but her voice was loud. She waved around a fluffy cotton candy stick when her brother took his last shot and missed, the squishy cork pellet ping-ponging off the wrong wooden shelf.

“Gah! I give up!”

“No, I want that penguin! You promised, you big meanie, you…” The girl trailed off at Mimiko standing nearby, her button nose smeared with a bit of cotton candy. She pointed triumphantly. “I bet even she can shoot better than you!”

“Huh!? Now you’re just dragging me through the mud—” Mimiko flinched a little under the brother’s stare, but he sank to her height with a muss of his hair. Then he canted the toy rifle towards her, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry about my lil sis, she’s being a total pain tonight since our parents aren’t around. Wanna try?”

“You’re the one who said you’d bring me!”

Slowly, Mimiko took the toy rifle. It was lighter than she’d thought; no wonder Seiji-san had carried it around so easily. It was still a bit big, so she had to balance the butt on her shoulder and lean on the counter with one eye squinted shut. The game vendor didn’t seem to mind. She squeezed the trigger.

The penguin stuffie fell down in a loud pop. The little girl’s cheers filled her ears distantly, the toy rifle almost half her height hugged to her chest.

“...wow, Captain was right after all, my aim really does suck…hey, missie!” She spun to find the high schooler holding up his hand. She’d never high-fived anyone other than the Fushiguros. Their palms connected and she didn’t shrink back from the teen’s tall shadow, his hands hooked in his pockets as he threw his head back for an embarrassed laugh. “Man, I just might get back into kyudo now so none of the guys can say anything— hey , Amaya, don’t run off! You’re gonna drop your cotton candy and throw a fit again, sheesh! Say thank you first!”

Those bouncing pigtails spun under the lanterns, the stuffed penguin squished under an arm as the two siblings vanished into the crowd.

“Thanks! Niichan, Niichan, let’s grab a choco banana next—”

Mimiko clutched the rifle close. She spun and ran off before she realized she hadn’t put it down yet, the long strap slapping her knees beside her bag.

How proud would Niisama be if he saw that just now?

She wasn’t scared of this town, no. Not afraid of any non-sorcerers.

She was just scared—

A nice, cool corner sandwiched by a vending machine and a green telephone booth that bore the crisp scent of fresh fish welcomed her. Just for a little while. Out came Megumi’s picture dictionary, the colour tabs blurring under her eager thumbs.

Of herself, lagging behind in the mud. But if she could fill up balloons, fan takoyaki grills, and win a stuffed penguin for someone she didn’t even know, surely, surely she could learn signs a little better and then it wouldn’t matter that she was a terrible burden for having to learn it at all.

She wished she could surprise Seiji-san with something better. Something more creative, like the Fushiguros’ family tree. Something more spectacular.

Good morning.

The taiko drummers filled the ground around the corner with joyful thunder.

Good evening.

Children ran past chasing each other with water guns.

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.

A pair of middle schoolers munching on shaved ice and talking about unfinished homework.

Everything.

Families in twos and threes and fours, toddlers held by their mother’s hand or hefted onto their father’s shoulders.

Okaasan. Otousan. Sister. Brother.

Mimiko was folding her lips against a tiny, hopeful smile when a shadow crunched to a stop in front of her.

She froze, clutching the picture dictionary and all its neat diagram boxes to her chest. A chestnut-haired boy silhouetted by the stall lights was scuffing his sandals.

“H-hey…”

Mimiko’s hand dropped from her chin, the last sign she shied from left unfinished.

There was a distinctly Nanako-less space beside her, much less a space for Tsumiki and Megumi. She jumped to her feet, dusting her satchel off. She scrunched the picture dictionary into a roll when Gima Kousuke thrusted out two double scoop ice cream cones from behind his back.

“Listen, so, uh…Mimiko, right? I—”

The toy rifle was still lying off by the side. Mimiko snatched it up, dragged back the round-tipped bolt to load the last pellet, and aimed it at him.

“Wait, wait, don’t—!”

The cork pellet bounced off his shoulder and he yelped, shielding his head. Another pull of the trigger released an empty click. Mimiko swung it around to grip it backwards like a bat, her teeth gnashed. But her feet shifted uncertainly.

“That hurt!” Kousuke burst out, both of them flinching. “What’s your problem—” He bit back the rest. One of the ice cream cones had splattered on the ground. Mimiko tore her gaze up, shifting her grip around the toy rifle and edging her way to the alley mouth. A stack of crates was in her way, the wooden pieces lit gold by the lanterns. So was Kousuke’s hair, his shoulders hunched high and his hands held up. Ice cream dribbled down his wrist.

“F-forget it. Forget I said that.” He swallowed noisily and she narrowed her eyes. “I…so, about that other day, with the…the baseball game…”

Just like that, the beauty of the night was shattered.

That was right. She couldn’t talk. Not over the phone, not face-to-face, not to anyone who didn’t care enough to wait for and read her scribblings. He was here to rub it in her face, like a door slamming open for paltry meal scraps under the thatch roof that had housed their cage. To rub in the fact that maybe Megumi had been wrong after all. That there wasn’t any purpose for her fingers to be her voice if she wasn’t good enough to begin with.

Yes. It wouldn’t be alright for people as wonderful as Seiji-san and Miharu-san to be followed around by something like her, the mute Hasaba who could hang people if she tried hard enough.

Flipping open her notebook, Mimiko tore her pencil across the page and ripped it off. The crumpled piece was shoved against Kousuke’s chest as she dropped the toy rifle and squeezed past.

Goodbye.

His hand grabbed her arm.

“Wait, I just—”

She slapped him right in the face with the picture dictionary, lifting it enough for them to stare at each other under the glossy roof of pages. Then Mimiko hit him again, a downpour of rolled-up smacks and a vicious elbow right to the chin for good measure, the taiko drums drowning out her frustrated noises and the scuffle of her feet. Kousuke hit the ground, his arms shielding his head again.

A thin dribble of blood ran down his lip, his hair a mess, his eyes wide before they slammed shut.

“I WANTED TO SAY SORRY!”

The battered picture dictionary froze.

“S-sorry, for making fun of you in front of everyone, and-and calling your sis a gorilla! It was dumb!”

He was saying sorry…? He wasn’t disgusted by her, like the lemon store lady, like the villagers of back then? Had her own relatives been among them? Had they? She didn’t know.

Mimiko scrubbed her eyes in disbelief and backed off, the picture dictionary dropped from her slack fingers. Kousuke scrambled to his feet. Both ice cream cones were a mess on the ground now, but he didn’t seem to mind so much as whether or not she’d hit him again.

“You’re always behind that gate or with the Getos, and we’ve never gotten to talk or play together, like ever , and your dad’s kinda scary with his gloomy hair and stuff, so…so I didn’t know what kinda jokes you like, and—”

It wasn’t funny, her pencil snarled against the torn page she slapped against his chest next.

But Kousuke was reading it. He slowly read out loud the next thing she shoved at him too, wiping his chin with his shirt.

It wasn’t funny, and you hurt my sister. Like my book hurt you. She jabbed him with her pencil.

“Y-yeah. You’re right. That hurt.” His cheeks were stained red. “I’m super sorry. Scorekeepers are cool. But,” he sped when Mimiko puffed her cheeks, “but you don’t have to be one! I was thinking a lot, and I think…the guys were wrong. As long as you can run fast and swing a bat,” he stole a glance at the discarded toy rifle, rubbing his shoulder, “and throw hard, you can play! And—”

He broke off, gulping as if waiting for another slap. Mimiko held her ground. She didn’t slap him.

“And…your sis is always hanging from trees and catching beetles, so,” Kousuke tugged on her shirt this time, lighter, “I…I caught this gigantic stag beetle in my backyard I wanted to show—”

“Don’t touch her.”

Mimiko whirled. Nanako was standing beside the green telephone booth, a grilled corn stick in hand. The lanterns lit her hair a fiery caramel, flyaways whisked across her cheeks from a light breeze. Her bike and its blue streamers rattled to a stop with a single backwards kick of the stand.

“I said,” Mimiko’s first ever translator between her and the world snared Kousuke’s hand and threw it aside hard enough he stumbled, “don’t touch her, you stupid baseball freak!”

“I—” Kousuke’s eyes flew to Mimiko’s. He was scared. “Just wait a sec, I—”

“Didn’t we tell you to get lost!? Why do you keep showing up? Just go smack a ball around like always!” Nanako snagged Mimiko’s arm and started hauling her along. “Mimiko, let’s go. Forget that loser. We have to go now.”

Mimiko couldn’t free her arm no matter how hard she tugged, glancing back. Kousuke and his bleeding lip, the dropped picture dictionary, and the little alley disappeared.

No. Megumi had borrowed that book. He said not to lose it no matter what—

“Stop pulling already,” Nanako gritted out, and Mimiko steeled herself. She ripped herself away, her wrist aching from how hard Nanako had squeezed it, and shoved her palm against Nanako when she lunged to grab her again.

What , she scribbled messily, are you doing

Nanako slammed her notebook shut, the pencil nipped in a scattered line before it too was snatched and stuffed haphazardly back into Mimiko’s bag.

Nanako never cut her off. Not when she was writing.

“Good, you’ve got your doll. I brought my camera to be careful.” She pulled up the bottom of her floppy hoodie. “Let’s go. I’ll explain when we’re safe.”

Safe?

Frustration bubbling up, Mimiko let herself get tugged along in fast scuffs of their shoes, the crowd rising up thick and oblivious like froth on boiling rice water. Nanako stormed right through the warmth of the night as if it didn’t exist at all, lanterns swaying and people clapping and goldfish wriggling in bags all streaking past.

What is it? Mimiko tried again in a wag of her finger, eyes wide. One of Megumi’s signs. She didn’t have time to write and Nanako wouldn’t give it to her, throwing glances over their shoulders and taking shortcuts behind mouth-watering stalls. Several water bottles and bulky snacks had been stuffed in the bike basket beside a thick backpack.

No, not just any backpack. A sleek, bulky black randoseru. There was only one of those in their house.

Mimiko didn’t want to think about why, but all the puzzle pieces were falling into place. Why Nanako had been so off lately. Why Nanako didn’t include her in things. Why Nanako had been slacking off on a few chores.

“I had to,” Nanako bit out eventually, her knuckles white over her handlebars as she wheeled her bike along, reading Mimiko’s thoughts. They were leaving the heart of the town, Mimiko caught between following her sister and being pulled along by her wrist that was starting to ache. “Miharu-san wouldn’t notice if it went missing because she wouldn’t look for it being missing. It’s not being used.”

Don’t take Niisama’s things, Mimiko tried to protest, but her pencil jerked at another hard yank of her wrist, Nanako whipping her head side to side without looking back.

“Why not? We took his jacket all that time ago, didn’t we? When we ran from the village—”

Mimiko broke free again, bolting in front of the bike with her arms spread wide. She snagged the randoseru and unzipped the top, yanking it open against Nanako’s protest.

Messily shaped onigiri. Bento boxes that weren’t closed. Snack bars. Plastic-wrapped fruit. Canned fish. Socks and underwear. A couple shorts and shirts. The tiny flashlight they used to talk at night, and even a kitchen knife.

Nanako yanked the randoseru back and pulled out another hoodie, forcing it over Mimiko’s head. She popped her head out and headbutted Nanako, struggling to drag both her and the bike backwards on skidding feet.

“It’s cold—in the mountains—” Begging, Nanako was begging in her own way. “Put it on! Don’t be stubborn! We have to leave before they notice!”

No, you stop being stubborn. How could Mimiko say that in sign? She didn’t know. She struggled to mouth it and drag up horrible sounds that tried to match the words and failed, panting hard, angry tears springing to her eyes.

“I planned out everything already!” Nanako’s eyes were shiny too, wide and determined and desperate, her voice hitching as she confessed more, more, and more, finally wrestling Niisama’s randoseru free. “I-I stole a map from Osaki-san’s bag at lunch, and I practiced with the kid knife so I can make our own food. We have to hunker down in the forest for a while.”

No, Mimiko didn’t want to run away. She didn’t want to leave their house behind. She wanted to live here instead of dying in the village whose crackling torches and heavy footsteps had chased her and Nanako and Niisama for so long until Niisama’s curse had whisked them up and away into the fold of the night.

But could she? Live here?

“Eventually, they’ll stop looking for us, and we can run down to different places to get things. Mimiko, we,” Nanako grabbed Mimiko’s wrists, the bike rattling between them, “we’ll just live in the mountains together—we can fish, Gojo-niisan taught us how, we’ll fish and we’ll sleep in trees and no one can tell us—no one will ever call us monsters who don’t deserve to live!”

Her voice rang, her shoulders shaking with effort as she latched onto Mimiko harder, shaking her senseless.

“Don’t you get it? We can’t stay here! It doesn’t matter how many candies we get or how many beetles we catch, we’re still—even now, we’re still Hasabas. We have to take ourselves far, far away, so nothing bad will happen to Seiji-san and Miharu-san. They can live their lives and we can live our own. Everyone will be happy and-and there’ll never be a lemon store incident ever again and Miharu-san can show Megumi how to make real, proper lemonade.”

Stop it. Stop it already. Gima Kousuke had apologized. She still didn’t like him, but he’d apologized, and most of all—

Mimiko held up six shaky fingers, swallowing hard. Mito, she mouthed firmly.

Nanako set her jaw.

“Even if the papers really come, that just makes everything worse,” she whispered, closing her hands over Mimiko’s. “You know that.”

Her sister was insisting this night so velvety, so speckled with stars, was stained by their touch. This summer night that belonged to Seiji-san and Miharu-san every summer, every year, until they’d come along. They’d dared to follow Niisama and live. They’d barged into these two people’s lives, and within six months, that change would become permanent.

And they couldn’t allow that. So what Mimiko wanted didn’t matter. She had wanted to follow the fireflies outside their cage’s hut too, hadn’t she?

Mimiko curled her fingers into her sister’s hoodie, twisting, and gave her a hard shove, rocking them back and forth.

Wrong, she wanted to plead. You’re wrong.

But the mud clinging to her ankles and the feathers of her wings that couldn’t fly said it all.

Nanako’s hugs were never truly hugs. They were bony shields like a shelter of twigs, her hard chin driving into her head and her fingers lacing with Mimiko’s, their hearts hammering as one. Her creaky bike with double baskets and weaved streamers walked with them until the ground was safely flat enough for their novice pedalling. She hadn’t had enough time to grab both their bikes.

Laughably, it was what stopped them.

The dirt roads between the fields were empty. The houses were quiet. The festival had drawn everyone like fireflies. Mimiko nibbled on the cold corn stick without taste, her shadow flitting under the sparse lamps so tiny by the dark mountains, Nanako cycling them both over jolts of pebbles and a few potholes. It was a hard-working, meaningless rhythm that broke every time the wheels hitched and they toppled.

Each time, Nanako crawled out, shook herself off, and swung herself back on, the wheels squeaking and the spokes spinning, over and over.

What would Niisama think, wherever he was across the country, of her and Nanako, how hard they were trying as the little bruised burdens he’d saved from that village even farther than Mito was?

Even now, sometimes, she didn’t fully understand what he was doing. As a stubborn, stressed sorcerer who gave up so much for the non-sorcerers he kept himself from behind gloves and smiles, studying and teaching and exorcising. But she wasn’t strong like him. She could only run away to protect the two non-sorcerers whose breath-taking paintings and warm rice she cared the most about.

Run away. Like that night so long ago. Run, run, run.

Mimiko took over pedalling, cold sweat stitching her shirt to her skin, but her sister and Niisama’s randoseru were heavy . Their town grew smaller at a painfully slow speed even when she fed some cursed energy into her legs, her chest caving in little by little like a woodpecker hammering at a tree.

Her calves went numb little by little. Tsumiki’s ghost hands cheered and steered her along, but the real Fushiguro girl would disapprove.

Something in the gear chain snapped by the time the distant taiko drumming had stopped, a heavy, tense silence hanging for the next event. An inspection with the flashlight told them it was unfixable.

Nanako slipped Niisama’s randoseru on Mimiko’s shoulders and tried to ride it anyway.

“He said,” she pushed out, huffing, her scraped knee raw and angry as she half-wheeled, half-dragged the bike out of a ditch, “to be brave. That stupid Tokyo boy on his stupid camping trip.”

Mimiko sank her teeth into the hollow of her cheek, gripping her arm off to the side.

“He said to hunker down and keep going,” Nanako’s foot kicked up the stand in a whimper of metal, “no matter what.”

The last of the corn grilled by someone else, someone kind and friendly in this little town who’d given it to Nanako without cursing her or hitting her or caging her, sat in a lump in Mimiko’s stomach. She wanted to puke it up again, the same way she did moldy food scraps tossed between their cage bars.

“He said, Mimiko, that stupid Tokyo boy, he said,” Nanako whirled, her eyes alive and sad, so sad, her voice cracking, “he said all I had to do was have more confidence! That it’d be okay! That I’m already good at this! But I’m not, we’re not!”

The bike was shoved, tumbling into the grass and spinning its wheels. Nanako sank beside it, her head buried in her arms. Her shoulders trembled.

“...Tsumiki, that wonderful hag, she was right about what moms and dads feel like,” she pushed out. “And that Gojo guy, you said he said Miharu-san and Seiji-san waited for us because they cared, right? Not to make us scared of non-sorcerers. But that’s not it.” Her shoe rasped back and forth. “Mito and Tokyo family courts aren’t it either. Last names aren’t it. Deadbeat dads aren’t it. I just know something’s wrong with us from the start.”

Mimiko stared down at her palms dirty from scraping against gritty tarmac that were suddenly growing blurry. Green-yellow smears of the fireflies came out, now of all taunting times, to play in the tufts of wind-tousled grass.

Yes. Because they were Hasabas.

“We, back in that village,” Nanako forged on, “maybe something else was supposed to happen.” She rose, stuffing the snacks in her pockets, and wheeled on Mimiko, her fist white-knuckled around their flashlight. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to be taken to Niisama’s family, and it’d be better if we—”

A bright, bright light swept over her. They whirled to shield their hands against its white sun that stole ‘death’ from the end of Nanako’s sentence.

The sun came to a standstill.

It belonged to Seiji-san standing by the roadside, his chunky searchlight bright enough to almost blind them sketching the electric poles and tall, unkempt grass as he approached in thick, fast clomps. Hiking boots that couldn’t believe the space they were crossing. His thumb pushed a switch on his flashlight and it dimmed to a comfortable burn.

He looked so different, like a heroic, distant figure out of his own drawings. A red sweater thrown over his shirt and his many-pocketed pants a strong grey, his flip phone’s green bar screen alight with a call in his hand.

They ran for nothing. He’d found them so easily. If he was a cursed spirit, Mimiko would have sensed him. But he wasn’t.

He was the father she was scared to be the daughter of. He couldn’t, he absolutely couldn’t come over here. Not now, when the festival was supposed to be the brightest star of the night, his and Miharu-san’s night. Mimiko drew her shoulders up to her ears, her eyes slamming shut with a tiny noise, and Seiji-san’s boots stopped short.

When her eyes cracked open again, he was gazing down at them by their broken bike as if they might be a figment of his imagination. All his hair had been gathered up into a tiny, messy ponytail, his fringe pinned aside with two bar clips, spilling down with the sheen of sweat on his neck. He raised his phone slowly, so slowly.

“...Miharu, I found them.” Mimiko felt Nanako’s flinch through their hands, felt her shoes scrape back over the gritty tarmac and bump into the water bottles that had rolled out of the bike basket. “You can tell Endo and the others to stop looking now…yes, by the cabbage fields Taniguchi-kun’s always warring with the land owners over.”

Seiji-san clicked his phone shut, slipped it away. Sank to their height, all without tearing his eyes from them.

He didn’t come any closer, but Mimiko could see that solemn purple who taught her how to read and write so patiently, so kindly, were alive. Trained on her like she was a world unto her own just out of reach.

“Mimiko—”

It was too much.

Mimiko whirled to dart behind Nanako, her hands laced and her forehead pressed against the clammy nape of her sister’s neck, tickled by the fast-fading scents of the festival they’d left behind. Below the curtain of her bangs, she saw Seiji-san pause, then set his flashlight down in a soft clunk. It painted a long white streak that ran past them all like an arrow.

“What are you doing so far out,” he asked plainly, his tone more brittle than the tip of a charcoal pencil and Mimiko blinked to wash the view of her feet a little clearer. “Mimiko, is this bathroom? And Nanako, I didn’t let you buy a snack just to run off when my back was turned.”

Seiji-san had always murmured so softly, moved so sloth-like with a slump Miharu-san chided him for. He was anything but now, his words surging like a river that had burst its banks and his hands squeezing his knees hard enough his knuckles trembled. His chest steeled itself to take a deep, long breath, and Mimiko caught a glimpse of his face between her bangs. That gaze was a kind of purple Niisama had inherited, same for the livid life that now swam in them.

It was angry. She felt herself crumple inwards a little more, like the mud on her ankles had solidified and was now cracking piece by piece.

“Miharu and I have been searching everywhere for you both, she called me and we thought— what are you doing out here? Boars come out at this time, if one of them wandered down the mountainside and caught you off-guard—” Seiji-san broke off.

He’d seen the randoseru on Mimiko’s back. Niisama’s randoseru. Mimiko gripped the straps, her breath warbling in her throat.

“We…” Nanako’s shadow was rooted into the tarmac where the flashlight didn’t reach. Mimiko didn’t dare look up at her. Here she was, shielding Mimiko again, translating for her wretched silence again. “We’re leaving. For good.” Nanako fought to keep her voice steady, clasping Mimiko’s limp wrists together behind her back, and suddenly the open fields were bearing down on them both from all directions. Mimiko ducked her head low, low, low, her bangs trimming down the world to just her dirty shoes and scraped shins. “We’re running away, isn’t it obvious?”

“Back to the house.” He was looking at the water bottles now, the snacks sticking out of Nanako’s pockets, his son’s bulky randoseru, Niisama’s piece of six grades of school, on Mimiko’s shoulders that they’d stolen. It weighed like an iron press.

“No.” Nanako’s knees locked together, all the fibres of her shirt’s baby blue trim lit by Seiji-san’s sitting flashlight. Mimiko focused on that. “Away from it. Away from the house, the hill, the town. Everything.”

“Was it the festival? Did the prep wear you down that much?” Seiji-san’s voice was aimed off to the side now, but Mimiko could still feel him watching them. Not looking directly the way he had when they’d first met, hiding behind Niisama’s legs, as if all the time between them was unravelling. “Or did the food give you an upset stomach, or was the noise too much all of a sudden? Something like that?”

Stubborn silence. The crickets chirped. Mimiko wished she could turn into one and hide better than her bowed head hovering over Nanako’s shoulders.

“Did someone say something to hurt you very, very badly when we weren’t around?” Mimiko couldn’t suppress her jolt, Nanako squeezing their interlaced hands, and Seiji-san seemed to grow almost as large as the mountains he rose in his paintings. His hand was twisting an empty circle around his ring finger in a sigh, every single thought he backtraced over so obvious. “...someone did, didn’t they? I should have known. The middle school boys get rowdy this time of year, but they’ll only do it again if you keep quiet—”

“You’re wrong,” Nanako blurted. “It’s not just the students. It’s-it’s everyone.” Everyone who knew they were Getos to-be and Hasabas-before. “It’s everyone.”

She repeated herself, as if it would strengthen the words, then names whose flung fakery Mimiko could feel through Nanako’s hot hands.

“Endo-san, Bando-san, Osaki-san, all your grownup friends in that town, we can’t stand them. They’re noisy, they’re loud, they do whatever they want—” Nanako almost bit her tongue, swallowing thickly. “We’re not like them. Festivals are for happy-go-luckies. We’re not lucky, we’re survivors. Survivors Hayashi-sensei said who…who need colour therapy and corners and quiet. Not choco bananas, or folk dolls, or water balloons, or-or—”

Once upon a time, that lie would’ve passed through. It would have held itself up, backed by huddled corners and shuffled feet, mistrusting bared teeth and lice-ridden hair.

Now, it was flimsy, flimsy like wet rice paper soaked by tears, and Seiji-san tore through them with firm ease. A simple push of a finger, and their story toppled down.

“You scratch your palm with your pinkie,” he said quietly, “when you lie, Nanako.”

Nanako froze.

“I think a father should know his daughter’s tells, at least. Mimiko can’t look anyone in the eye when it comes down to the truth either.”

A father. A daughter. He was saying it so easily again, as easily as he handled her noose doll.

Seiji-san’s hands rubbed his knees in slow circles before lacing together, his voice continuing firmly as if he was reliving the entire day, no, the entire summer and taking it apart with methodical practice, just like Miharu-san picking out weeds. It somehow made everything a thousand times worse.

“Endo’s a real character, but I don’t think someone who hates him would spit melon weeds with him until she nearly choked. Bando-san’s a good judge of character; she’s only ever given her best candy stash to those she actually likes. Osaki-san recently came back from getting her degree in the big city and there are plenty who say she’s lost her roots, but it was Miharu who convinced her to go and Miharu who welcomed her back the most. Practically cajoled her into daily festival prep check-ups since the atmosphere at the town office is bearable at best. And it was Hayashi-sensei who recommended we let you pitch in with everyone, because he said corners don’t describe the full scope of the world.

“But, despite all that,” Seiji-san’s voice dipped back down, the weight of his gaze touching Mimiko lightly, then shifting more firmly to Nanako, “you’re saying you hate them.”

“Yes.” Nanako tucked her pinkies in, her fists sweaty and whitened.

“The definition of hatred, I showed you it in a dictionary in our first few lessons. Do you remember?”

Mimiko bit her tongue.

“Yes,” Nanako whispered. “It’s a strong word.”

“A strong word, but you use it like you’re salting eggs. I told Miharu the fact you use it means you have a strong heart. You have a lot inside. So I let you, we let you. Because we wanted to be there for the day you’d use the word that ran alongside it, in the other direction.”

Nanako had been reduced to a jerkish nod, her chin twisted away. The fireflies tinged her bitten bottom lip a murky pale green, turned the smudge of blood black.

The shape of that word had already been traced by Megumi’s fingers before, and the memory jerked Mimiko’s chin up from the arrow-like streak of the flashlight. It was a mistake.

That look on Seiji-san’s face, resigned under speckled starlight, hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

He was hurting, her father. She’d done that to him. She’d let Nanako say all those things, do all those things, and it was the same as her doing them herself. Someone had reached into her chest and put her own doll’s noose around her heart and hung it. Tsumiki and Megumi hadn’t said anything about that when it came to family.

She didn’t know anything in the world could feel worse than the cage.

“I see. Then…”

No, no, no. It ached badly enough her eyes watered, her chest throbbed, enough to ignite the weakest of sparks in her, Nanako’s skinny ankles and tight uneasy fists suddenly left behind for her to step in front of her shield, her translator.

Mimiko was shaking, her knuckles cradled and her eyes hiding behind her bangs. Why was this so hard? Clinging to Niisama as they treaded up that hill in the middle of the night was so easy, being jealous of the Fushiguros was so easy, running away and shutting out the world was so easy.

I

Her fingertip hit her collarbone again and again, lost and floundering when it tried to point to Seiji-san.

If it wasn’t for this person who’d taught her how to read and write, she’d be shut off from the intricacies of the world forever. Not even Nanako would know that she loved the way watercolour breathed colourful life on the canvas, that she liked her rice piping hot enough to scald the roof of her mouth, that her favourite time of day was when the sun blushed between the trees.

She gave up on signing.

Sorry.

That was the sound she tried to make instead, her voice garbled and her shoes scraping as she curdled the bottom of her shirt and wrung it out. It sounded nothing like the way a sorry would, but she did it anyway.

Her fingers formed a helpless fist that smacked her thigh over and over.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

What else could she say to him, who’d helped her live after she was saved? How could she even express everything that ‘Otousan’ was supposed to mean, from tying her laces and helping her with homework to sunset piggyback rides and walking on the outside of the road, and that ruining the man who wore that new name now would be worse than any night in the mountains?

Seiji-san’s boots slid forward in a soft grind.

“No.”

She looked up, the stars glistening overhead and the fireflies dancing on the brink of her tears.

And she saw fingerspelling.

Mi

Mi

Ko

The letters made by Seiji-san’s own two hands were formed in swift, sincere gestures. He pinched a stroke down his nose and held up an upright palm.

I’m sorry.

It stole her lungful of breath, opposite to how Niisama’s appearance in front of the cage that fateful evening had tipped fresh air down her throat.

“Don’t cry, Mimiko. Please.”

His thumbs wiped under her eyes firmly, something glossy taken out from his sweater. Megumi’s picture dictionary. It was shaken out and placed on her head like a hat she could clutch onto, the pages bunched and crinkled at the edges from where she’d smacked Gima Kousuke. Seiji-san had found it.

He was so good at finding things.

“Seiji-san, you—know sign…?” Nanako managed in disbelief.

“I’m a little rusty. I volunteered at a cultural exchange centre for a while after high school. Artists should know how the world is from all kinds of views. But it was Gojo-kun who gave me the idea to brush up, and I was thinking about talking it over with Hayashi-sensei.” The response was so blunt, so Seiji-san-like. Together with Endo-san’s tales, the kind of person he once was and was now shimmered in a weak, wispy shape out of grasp, Mimiko’s face half-tucked towards the ground. He pet her hair gently. “...you never asked. You never ask anything of us or expect anything of us, either of you, even when you need it the most.”

Mimiko swallowed thickly, pulling away far enough to flick her shaky fingers from the bridge of her nose.

Sorry. Again. Sorry. Again. Sorry. She mashed her palm’s heel against her eyes, sparks of red smeared against the back of their lids.

There was a deep sadness mixed in Seiji-san’s eyes now, and it took all her strength not to pull Megumi’s dictionary down in front of her own in shame.

“Hayashi-sensei said as much. That it’ll take time,” he admitted, “but we can’t wait if you leave us first. Never asking, always bottling things up, always striking out on your own, we can’t help if you don’t turn our way even once. Are Miharu and I…not good enough parents you feel you’re up to that?”

Mimiko’s throat crumpled again, all of Megumi’s hasty lessons flying in and out so she couldn’t remember a single thing to reply in sign with. She should’ve asked him for more complex sentences, more complex words, so Nanako wouldn’t have to—

“But you can’t be our parents,” her sister ground out, her voice tiny and desperate, her hands clamped over the back of her neck as she rode on rocking heels. “You can’t make us call you Otousan and call Miharu-san Okaasan if it ruins your lives having Hasabas under your roof, you just can’t.”

“Ruin…?” Seiji-san’s brows pinched together, but something inside Nanako had snapped, the same as her bike gear chain.

“I’m ugly, I climb trees, I can’t do my own hair,” she pulled at her hair now, her palms pressing on her ears as she twisted to pace a tight circle, “I shout, I get into trouble a lot, and I glare at everyone…and…right, that stupid Tokyo boy and his sister! The Fushiguros said, they said a mother and a father don’t have to share your blood and it’s what,” Nanako’s hand raked over her heart, “what they make you feel that matters, but if that’s really true, then—we feel wrong!”

She swallowed, shook her head, and continued with bunched fists, her voice bouncing across the open fields.

“Your lives were perfect after you sent off Niisama, weren’t they!? To Tokyo! Miharu-san has a garden, you have your paintings! The people in town call you empty nesters. Every day, you have beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets and calm dinners and sleepy nights. That sounds so peaceful, and pretty, prettier than the nails Tsumiki gave us! I like that! I want it for you, because you’re nice. And good. You were…the first people nice to us. After Niisama. The very first.”

“Nanako,” Seiji-san began carefully, but Nanako shook her head again.

“You can’t have peace with burdens around! There’s no way a normal mother and father want that, non-sorcerer or not. Even if we stand still, even if we do our best with veggie deliveries and grocery shopping, we’re still changing things, and those aren’t good things—”

“Who said they aren’t?” Shifting Mimiko aside, his hand weighing solidly on her head, Seiji-san spoke with a tinge of confusion. “No one in town minds you two, no one that I care about, at least. We took you out to the festival preparations so you could see that, and if anyone said anything, did anything, no matter what or who happened, we’d be there for you. Because our house isn’t the edge of the world, it’s only the start, and we want—” His eyes pressed shut, reopening with the dimmer note of his voice. “I want you to live like that, truly. Where the valley is your home, not just our house.”

But

You lived in the valley first

Mimiko’s eyes burned behind the pages of her notebook, her pencil gripped tightly and her satchel flap hanging open. Her letters were all wobbly and her page had damp spots from her tears, but the graphite hadn’t smudged completely.

We came after

If we take your last name then we

“Then we’ll live here permanently. We’ll bring trouble. Not-not sorcerer trouble, family trouble.” Nanako finished where her pencil left off. “Niisama’s…not like us. I know that much.” Swallowing thickly, she took a shaky breath. “He’s perfect, and he’s your blood son, he’s from here , from your own house, and everyone loves him. But I’m a gorilla and Mimiko’s a mute. I’ll pick fights and she’ll be ignored. And we still get nightmares and wake you up.” She inhaled deeply, stalked forward, and whipped her bloodshot gaze to meet Seiji-san’s with so much bravery, so much fear, leaning on her tip-toes to grab his sweater. “Even..even with all that, do you really want messy daughters like us!?”

“Yes!”

That wasn’t Seiji-san’s voice.

Miharu-san was usually a sturdy reed, and so was the familiar wave of comforting calm that washed Mimiko from head to toe just seeing her. But her shoulders were rising and falling hard, her hands curling around the handles of a bike too small for her. Sweat shone on her forehead and throat, her hair a mess in its braid that tumbled over her shoulder when she dismounted and staggered over.

“Miharu, you didn’t steal that, did you,” Seiji-san began, sidestepping from her passing swat that didn’t even connect.

Miharu-san didn’t sink in front of Mimiko and Nanako. She simply gazed at them, her heavy breaths serenaded by the crickets and the broken strap on her sandal lit by the curious fireflies, and they gazed up at her in disbelief equal to her exhaustion.

And then she covered her mouth so Mimiko couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, her voice a sweet twisted croak all the same.

“Yes,” she repeated, a tear leaking free that was swiped by a knuckle, “we do want you both, silly.”

Mimiko’s lip trembled. It tasted like metallic, same as the night she and Nanako had fled for their lives, dizzy and sweaty and terrified, Niisama in soft, wide pants like black clouds, his nightly jacket with a gold button sheltering them, leading them out of their cage, their hut, then plunged into the trees in the pure desperation of someone trying to survive.

Someone who wanted to live, and for them to live too.

Seiji-san slowly opened his mouth again, and Miharu-san pulled out her phone. The green bar screen was still lit. The phone call had never ended.

A wave of dizziness hit Mimiko. Everything, she had heard everything. Niisama’s randoseru suddenly felt like a massive stone she had to clumsily shrug off, its weight crashing into her knees like a scolding headbutt as she tried to heft it up. It settled into a firm hug, and she didn’t let go, the straps bulging up like ladybug wings by her cheeks hot with shame.

Nanako looked like she’d been hit in the back of the head.

“We really have to do this together, Seiji.” There was a fond crack in Miharu-san’s voice, the call ended and her phone pocketed in a soft beep and click. “You’re too absent on your own.”

“...I suppose I am.”

“Then go on and pick up those water bottles.” Miharu-san swept her flyaways back with a steadying intake of breath, dusted herself off, and slipped into a low squat so she could take both Mimiko and Nanako by the shoulder. Mimiko tried not to flinch. “Girls, can you look at me? Please? Just for a little, so I know you’re listening.”

Strong. She was strong, like Niisama. How did she do it, washing away and soothing so many of the prickling, burning nerves inside Mimiko?

…mother-like, Tsumiki had said. That she’d know it when she felt it.

Nanako’s chin lifted just a smidgeon. Mimiko copied her, then went back to staring at Niisama’s randoseru, its silver buckles and fine stitching.

“Didn’t I tell you before?” Miharu-san began gently, kneading her lap. “That we’ve done this before, with Ru-chan. That we don’t mind two more.”

Nanako hunched her shoulders, her voice hardly more than a strained mumble. “That was jujutsu . Living like normal people is hard—”

“I never had a normal thought when Ru-chan showed up with you beside him that night.” Miharu-san laced her fingers tightly over her knee. “Do you believe that, Nanako-chan, Mimiko-chan? I didn’t. I saw him, our tired son who’d grown up so much in a world we could never see, and I saw you two. Scared, looking without a good wash in days, hiding so small behind him. And I thought…”

She smiled, the skin around her eyes creased and pink.

“‘Ah, my Ru-chan needs his mother’s help again. I’m so glad he came to us.’ I didn’t even notice all the dirt in the genkan until he’d left again. I was worried, but the only thing in my mind was helping him. And to help him, Seiji and I had to help you. At first, it was just to repay that trust. A child coming to their parent is the greatest, greatest honour they can be bestowed. No matter how little, how seemingly insignificant, we wanted to help him. But after Gojo-kun came and left in winter…”

“For me, it was when Mimiko painted something for the first time.” Seiji-san pulled Miharu-san’s bike upright, doing the same for Nanako’s. He spoke without looking up. “Suguru knocked over a paint jar first, but she actually drew something.”

“And Nanako puffed her breath on the bedroom window.” Miharu-san’s chuckle was gentle, loving enough Mimiko willed herself to meet the woman’s tender gaze again. “I was done washing dishes at the time, but I went and rescrubbed a pot like crazy to contain myself. I realized it.”

“Realized what…?” Nanako folded her hands together uncertainly, her eyes flicking between them both, then to Mimiko.

“We didn’t want you to go.”

They…had wanted them to stay…? Since that long ago? Gojo-niisan had said it. He’d said they waited.

But hearing it from him and hearing it from them were two different things. The difference was Mimiko’s head jerking up for good. The difference was Nanako crumpling the bottom bulk of her hoodie, her shoe toeing a scraped circle in a storm of disbelief before she dropped her hands and blurted, “But, you had to quit being on that women’s neighbour committee and making everyone’s favourite tea!”

“So? It was worth it. I can only stand nattering around for so long.”

Nanako’s jaw fell open, struggling to work. “...you’re not making any sense. You were normal. You were happy.”

“I’m very happy now. Maybe even happier now.”

“But—you have to garden more and cook more and clean more, and—if someone starts rumours, it’ll be about you too, not just us, and it’ll be because of us—”

“Any non-sorcerer who has sorcerers as their children is automatically nicked from the list and added to another. Those with a history of cursed techniques cropping up even more so.” Bent on his knee, Seiji-san stooped to pick up the last fallen water bottle to add to his armful. “The people from Jujutsu Tech told us that. We were normal, once.” His tone sounded far away before it returned. “But not anymore.”

“And we don’t want to return,” Miharu-san added softly. “Having Ru-chan was the best thing that happened to us. Any child is like that for any willing parent with open eyes. They,” she curled Nanako and Mimiko’s bangs behind the shell of their ears, “are a blessing . Not a burden. Never a burden. What do we do when something or someone happens? As Getos.”

“We…” Nanako swallowed. Her fingers finally flexed free from their fists. “We fly, fly, fly on.”

“That’s right. Thank you for worrying so much about us. That’s very, very kind of you.” Miharu-san’s gaze turned onto the picture dictionary she took from Nanako, flipping through it. “And we’ll have to thank the Fushiguros too. Sign language…that was likely Megumi-kun’s idea, wasn’t it? That clever boy.”

She rested her hands on her knees, tucking Mimiko and Nanako into her gaze.

“Now, do you want to go back?”

Choice. They were being given a choice.

“Yeah.” Nanako’s response was immediate, her knuckles cradled in her palm before they dropped and swung by her side, her camera strap tugged out. “I want to go. To take pictures for Niisama. With you all.”

Right, they still had to catch him up on everything when he came back. All the delicious food, the countless games, the goldfish scooped in splashing nets, the cotton candy clouds.

But…

Mimiko hesitated. She was squeezing Niisama’s randoseru tight enough she could feel the food inside tumble about in protest. Seiji-san took it from her so she could balance her notebook, hold her and Nanako’s little flashlight, and write slowly, swiping at her eyes and nose as she went.

I want, she began, struggling where to go next. To go, but

So she went everywhere and anywhere her thoughts took to in a struggling, flapping flight towards the festival that marched on without them, the festival Seiji-san and Miharu-san had left just for them, tearing off pages to hand over without stopping.

She wrote towards that explosion of nightly summer.

You’ve always put up with everything we do

And you never

Get mad

Just like Niisama, you’re

A saviour

Niisama waited so long to

Bring Megumi

That cold boy with the wolves on his long-sleeve who’d been ever so slightly taller than her and Nanako in autumn had dumped book after book on their bedroom floor, sitting cross-legged in front of them stubbornly, his hands fixing everyone’s and his own.

And Tsumiki

That warm girl with the cats on her turtleneck who’d fought back red-eyed and furious in the snow enough against Nanako’s teeth and nails, then persisted in so many sorries it was both unnerving and eye-opening, now engrossed in painting the insides of gaiken, a wrinkled white T her makeshift smock and her chin smeared absently in vibrant colours.

You waited so long to

Adopt us properly

I want to be more because of that

Mimiko’s pencil shook hard.

More. More. Not even better, just more, if she could help it. More directions to lost people in the train station, more dishes dried and stacked on the rack, more wrings of the cloth to wipe down the engawa.

But even after Mito’s papers come

You can’t hear

Her pencil ripped right through the wet parts of the page.

You can’t hear me call you Otousan or Otousan out loud

I don’t want to stand out as a weird Geto

Because I can’t talk like Nanako or Niisama

Or Tsumiki or Megumi

Because I want

Her pencil scritched to a stop at a very faint boom in the distance.

And then she found herself pulled into Seiji-san’s arms, the scents of the festival tickling her nose and a heart that was more thunderous than the taiko drummers whose vibrant beat urged her to shed all her downy feathers.

A hug. He drew back once she managed to look up at him.

“Mimiko.”

Mimiko

Seiji-san’s signs were strung together in slow, methodical movements. He was struggling too, trying all the same as he leafed through Megumi’s picture dictionary, then continued both signing and talking.

“A family…” A family, a thumb and pinkie sheltered by a slanted palm, isn’t two, or three, or four people

It is

Meeting each other

Leaning on each other

Loving each other

Growing with each other

Talking with each other

“With the voices of your lives,” he finished, setting his hands on her shoulders. “And your lives can come from anywhere.” He settled his hand over her head, raising it to meet his murky gaze that was a little easier to look at now that his clips were slipping loose. “So I want you to choose if you want to talk out loud again or not. It’s on me for not bringing the idea of sign language to the table earlier, and…I’m sorry as your father.” Two signs she recognized. “But I want you to decide for yourself once you’re confident enough. Because there are some who might think signing isn’t ‘normal’ either. That was why we started with your notebook. Whenever you feel you want to migrate from it—”

“I’ll do the punching this time,” Nanako broke in. She raised her chin at Miharu-san’s fast blink, her knuckles rubbing together reluctantly. “Last time…it was…Tsumiki. Who punched someone for Mimiko.”

It was only the first hit. Megumi did most of the work, Mimiko corrected. And, her pencil took a raspy breath, Kousuke apologized already.

Nanako’s lip curled. “He did what?”

“Gima Kousuke?” Seiji-san suddenly leaned forward with an intense look. “That sloppy grandson of that mochi shop owner who nearly hit a home run over our hill, that Gima Kou—”

Miharu-san waved her hands. “Wait, wait, start from the beginning. Tsumiki-chan and Megumi-kun did what and when—?”

The sky saw colour, a spark of string beads blooming far overhead. It carried over the valleys closer and closer, a faint echo scattering on the hides of soft-bellied clouds.

The fireworks had started. They were even more beautiful than Mimiko had ever imagined, out here, smelling the faint smoke in the air and in her mouth and the valley. They lit Seiji-san’s hair with countless gleaming streaks and tossed beauty across Miharu-san’s face.

And so Mimiko’s fingers followed through to continue what Megumi had placed at the top of her learning list, a tug to turn her parents to her first before she signed nice and slow, her cheeks a brilliant tinkling warmth.

Her pointer and thumb traced a stroke of her chin, pinching to pull at the bottom, and Seiji-san’s tranquil eyes half-hidden by his hair reflected all the fireworks in the night.

“It means I love you,” he belatedly informed the woman who had been Obasan and then Miharu-san and now Okaasan, who blinked fast and covered her surprised smile before she carefully signed the same thing back and strode ahead to wheel the bikes along.

“Seiji,” she called over her shoulder, “didn’t I say our son would bring great things about?”

“Other than the martial contests he swept? Of course. He actually tamed someone like Gojo-kun.”

Sliding his hands under her arms, the man who had been Ojisan and then Seiji-san and now Otousan hiked Mimiko up onto his shoulders, rising from a wobbly but firm squat. The sky bloomed seashells and popcorn, her fingers plugging her ears in awed delight.

A soft click turned her head. Nanako had her vintage camera raised as she walked, one eye squinted shut and Niisama’s randoseru half-slung on her back. She swung it at an especially loud boom, countless colours raining down in a pom-pom flare.

Fun? Mimiko signed at her, shaking her hands up and down above Seji-san’s head.

Nanako gazed up at her.

Her sister, her shield, her translator.

She raised her camera in a click, and Mimiko knew her startled face had been captured forever.

The kinds of silence between them had been, now, and always would be special.

“Whatever you both want to do,” Okaasan suddenly said, her voice raised, and they both turned, “tree-climbing or bug catching, or drawing and reading, stomping or signing, we’re fine with it.” She shaded her eyes to the long road back into town, the treeline echoing the fireworks’ distant shrill booms, smoke wafting down in a pleasant tang. “Slowly, slowly, grow, and we’ll walk right beside you each step of the way. But we can only do that if you tell us things. What you hate, what you love, what you’re scared of, what you want to become. Ru-chan walked the same path, you know. But he walked it so well we had to prod him to be a little wilder.”

“Then he went and got his ears pierced with his first middle school allowance in a shady shop in town, so that was the last time I gave him solid advice after he hit puberty.” Otousan got his shoulder lightly chopped, bowing with the motion and shifting Mimiko higher up in a soft bounce. She could spy his smile in the corner of his eye. “But even if things don’t turn around right away…”

Okaasan raised her hand to wave at a boxy flatbed truck sweeping its headlights down the road. It was Endo-san’s, free of melons and ready for a ride back to the festival.

For all of them.

The Getos.

“Your parents are here.”

Her smile was Ibaraki itself.

Being the homeroom teacher for thirty rowdy children, restless, tanned, and bursting with wild tales both tall and true from summer vacation, was rewarding in the same way it was…sometimes like pulling teeth or scoring blind dates.

Still, Amano Kozue always strove to do her best.

Skimming her pen down her clipboard, she poked herself into the classroom to recount heads for attendance. The social studies teacher, Saeki-san, gave her a subtle OK by the blackboard that bore a ‘Welcome back!’ in large colourful chalk, the date, and the weather—a beautiful half sunny, half cloudy morning that had almost convinced Kozue to zip up over her favourite loose cardigan on her way to work.

So things had been sorted out after all; there had been a mixup last minute and several teachers had received the wrong schedule slot. Saeki-san, though, a pep in the thirty-something’s teasing grins as always, looked like she had things under control.

“Hoshi, gimme back my racecar eraser! Gushiro Ace and I are trading after!”

“Uh, no, he said he’d give me his dump truck sharpener. You get the lame pickup truck one ‘cause you lost our marshmallow roasting contest!”

“Only because you teamed up with your sis and Jiro-niisan, that smug traitor—”

“Hino-kun, Kasai-kun,” Saeki-san chirped, her tea tumbler setting down in a firm clink, and the two bickering boys straightened up under a shoreline of snorts and snickers. “You’re really excited to go next, aren’t you? Alright, come up front! What do you have for us?” Ignoring their groans and elbowing, she gave Kozue another OK sign, this time paired with an energetic wink.

Checking off the boxes next to Hino Jomei and Kasai Hoshi on her list, Kozue backed out and bobbed several bows with a smile to the mothers and fathers whispering to each other on either side of the hall as they peered into different rooms, curiosity and pride radiating so brightly.

The first day of school falling on parent visitation day…she couldn’t have asked for a better coincidence. The rowdier kids would put on their best faces—and embarrassed blushes, certainly—if they were reading out their work under the touched gazes of their parents. Once they put aside their glum blues at vacation ending, second graders always had so much life to them. That much was evident from a music performance and sock puppet show that had stolen Kozue’s heart, a happy hum bubbling as she twirled her pen merrily on her way back to the teacher’s office.

Then she paused, backpedalled, and glanced through the classroom window again, this time with company. She sidestepped for a ginger-headed man inconspicuously clutching a work duffel and a short haired lady simultaneously checking the classroom number and waving at Kasai-kun, who had wormed on a cardboard robot suit, the bulky chest place scrawled with a solar system. Hino-kun was avidly zooming between different planets with a toy astronaut, his voice growing louder once he noticed his father’s two-fingered salute.

“My cousin and I got…have got…two family galaxies! This is the Hino galaxy and the Kasai Galaxy. The Hino Galaxy got a new planet, Planet Juri! She’s super chubby and eats a ton…”

Two seats were empty, but two names had been checked off. Saeki-san was scribbling down notes as she watched the ongoing presentation, not seeming bothered in the least. Kozue was certain she had to have noticed. She nibbled on her lip out of bad habit and blanched at the taste of her new lipstick, excusing herself past Hino-kun’s father and Kasai-kun’s mother.

The Fushiguros had definitely come to school earlier, hadn’t they? The more elaborate presentations had been kept inside the classroom; she’d spotted a big box with their name on it by the back. But the stream of parents popping in and out were also missing two faces. Kozue already knew not to expect much, but two and two put themselves together to form a clear image.

Out of everyone in their class, or perhaps even their grade, the Fushiguro siblings were the oddest.

Everyone in the teacher’s office agreed in their own way, through subtle resigned smiles or passed knowing looks. Outstanding grades, good behaviour, wild independence that challenged their age almost concerningly, and the younger brother was a genius. Most of all, their family situation…was honestly like something out of a movie.

A tragic death, a struggling father and a remarried mother now both absentee, two incredibly young cousins on opposite sides stepping up as guardians. No one said anything but everyone had gossiped about it on lunch break one time or another, whether she was around to give them death glares and click her pen pointedly or not.

And so Amano Kozue nibbled at her lipstick anyway. Neither the head-turning white-haired cousin who was always late or the refined long-haired one who was always early had shown up. Nor would they show up; she was more likely to score herself an actual win at a mixer her old college friends liked to drag her to. It wasn’t unheard of for working parents to miss out on visitation day, but…after all the effort the two Fushiguros had no doubt put in…

Hushed voices outside the boys’ bathroom backtracked her steps behind a corner.

“—but, if you’ve got butterflies in your stomach because you’re worried about Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan, isn’t that a good thing?” The sister, Fushiguro Tsumiki, was poking her brother’s tummy a couple times. “I think it’s cute!”

The brother, Megumi-kun—though it was harder to believe he was younger when he’d shot up to match Tsumiki-chan in height—smacked her hand off, tucking his own under his arms. “No. I don’t get nervous.” He shifted from foot to foot. “And I’m not cute.”

His sister peered up at him from her squat. “Well, do you think our family tree’s cute?”

Kozue held her breath when the brother scowled. From all the times she took attendance and listed out announcements every week, the little Fushiguro boy had always held himself in stout confidence.

Now, he was tugging on his hair and staring hard at the far wall, his faintly tanned cheeks twisted in a dawdling scowl.

“I just,” he muttered sullenly, “don’t wanna let them down. After they worked hard.”

Kozue’s heart melted.

Shaking her head, the Fushiguro sister laced her hands with her brother’s and pulled them into a huddle.

“We worked hard together,” she insisted. “Mimiko-chan said Gima Kousuke got taken off the black list after Ojisan hunted him down and Obasan gave him the talking-to of a lifetime, so I won’t need to use my fist of justice again. And you said Junichiro-niisan didn’t mind his dictionary getting a little roughed up!”

“Even if we don’t put on a manzai performance. Even if the script isn’t storybook sappy anymore. Even if…if we’re the only ones who don’t have anyone showing up and the adults are lining up in the hallway and peeking into classrooms, we—” Megumi-kun’s stare was serious. “You sure it won’t be weird? Like we’re overdoing it?”

Stage fright. Even a boy as standoffish as Fushiguro Megumi could get stage fright, and the faces he no doubt wanted to see the most wouldn’t be there to support his shyer side through it. Kozue’s lips thinned into a line.

“Remember, Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii are out there being brave against all the evil spirits of the city, the prefecture, the country. Parent visitation day is…important for other kids, but you and I aren’t ordinary kids. We,” Fushiguro Tsumiki’s whisper was brimming with imagination, “know the secret of the world, don’t we?”

“...yeah. We do.”

Kozue pressed her clipboard to her forehead, squashing down a tragic sigh as the two siblings stared hard at each other with interlaced fingers. Second graders did have so much life to them. If her brother was the proud talk of the soccer club’s shocking tournament sweep, Fushiguro Tsumiki was known for her wild creativity. Guilt seeped into the set of Kozue’s shoulders.

Even if Saeki-san had said excusing them from the project would just single them out, the two most important spots on that tree that couldn’t be replaced would surely stand out like sore thumbs…

“Therefore!” The Fushiguro sister grinned until her cheeks looked like they hurt, her bangs bouncing with her giggle as she jumped up. “I’m su-uper positive! Let’s go, Megumi.”

Sympathy swirling inside her, Kozue slumped against the wall as she watched them march side by side back to their class with purpose.

“To make a super smashing presentation for our cousin-aunts,” she heard the Fushiguro brother add importantly, “I’ll make sure we’ve got good lighting.”

“Yep, yep! Obasan and Ojisan got the first private viewing, so now everyone gets the global release! Oh, when we get back home, let’s watch The Secret World of Arrietty again, okay?”

“Again? I want to see Prince Ash*taka.”

…cousin-aunts?

Kozue cast a bewildered glance at her clipboard.

She tucked it under her arm, and, determination getting the better of her, trailed after them.

She alone stood outside the classroom door, a singular figure of unrequired support, but she soon found herself just as confusedly captivated as everyone inside.

“Fushiguro Tsumiki-chan, Fushiguro Megumi-kun? You can start your presentation now.”

A sharp groan of chairs slid back in unison that had to be practiced. Tsumiki hefted up the big box from the back of the classroom with her brother’s help and carried it to the front in soft jingles and clinks. They took their places in front of the board, Tsumiki unearthing a strange, almost bird cage-like contraption. She held it by the top with a pinch of her fingers, so it had to be light, and the cloth draped sweetly but secretively over it in a way that reminded Kozue of a baby mobile.

“Ahem,” she declared with all the passion of a storybook teller, clicking her shoes together. “Megumi, lights!” She waited for her brother to draw the curtain just enough to let sunlight filter across the blackboard. His challenging stare flickered across the back row of amused parents as he made his way back, then set itself straight ahead.

“So…today, my sister and I are presenting our family tree,” he said carefully, pulling something out of his pocket. A…a pointer stick? It extended in a small click, and he hooked it behind his back like a military officer. “We didn’t give it a name or anything, but,” Kozue saw his eyes land on Hino-kun briefly, “it’s sponsored by the Fushiguro-Geto Alliance. We eat a lot of shaved ice and…cook bad omusoba. Don’t try the omusoba.”

A few giggles.

“Also, as a disclaimer, we had a grownup help.” Megumi glanced up to the ceiling briefly, and Kozue caught him mouthing something under his breath before he spoke again. “Special thanks to Geto Seiji, my sister’s uncle. He paints great stuff.”

At his sharp nod, his sister pulled off the cloth in a wild flourish.

The clear cheer of eight furin bells jangled through the classroom, their once crystal clear gaiken now a carnival wheel of delicately painted animals: wolves, rabbits, beetles, storks, fireflies, and more. Tanzaku strips hung from the clappers, bearing names in bold black on soft green-edged cream. A wooden framework hung from a broad wire hanger wrapped in paper Fushiguro Tsumiki shook about, her eyes alight with the same sun rays that reflected pastel spotlights across her and her brother’s faces.

Two of the top bells stood out the most—whales and stars, foxes and suns—but the family tree was split in halves, the names of snow-capped mountains running along the branches.

Fujisan and Tsukuba-san.

Saeki-san’s pen dropped. Hino-kun stretched across his desk with a grin, Kasai-kun throwing up a double thumbs-up. Tsumiki-chan’s friends looked no different from a flock of parakeets with their huge eyes trained on the board, fists proudly pressed to their mouths. The parents were murmuring to each other and fighting back smiles.

Not once did either Fushiguro spare a single glance for any empty spaces looking on.

“Starting now,” the boy began, a faint gleam in his blue-green eyes, “we will be introducing our ultra unorthodox family one hundred kilometres apart.”