Chapter Fifty A Good Daughter
Chapter Fifty
A Good Daughter
Every detail was as Hana remembered. The pawnshop looked exactly the same. The only difference was that this pawnshop built in the middle of a sprawling rock garden was pristine. There was no trace of the chaos she had awoken to the day her father had vanished.
“Please, have a seat,” Toshio said, offering Keishin a place at their dining room table.
“Thank you, Ishikawa-san,” Keishin said, shock and confusion still lingering on his face.
Hana wondered if she looked the same. Sitting for tea with her father in the middle of a building that looked exactly like their home was the last thing she had expected to find beneath the ground.
“I know that you have a lot of questions, Hana,” Toshio said. “But first let me ask you one of my own. Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” Hana’s voice came out in a tone she had never used to speak with her father. “What do you mean, ‘why am I here’?”
“I mean exactly the words I asked. What are you doing here?” Toshio said. “You shouldn’t have come. I thought that you would have understood the message I left you.”
“What message?” Hana said.
“The same message that apparently led you here.”
“You had vanished, the pawnshop had been ransacked, and a choice had been taken from the vault. What did you expect me to do?”
“I expected you to be smarter.”
“Smarter?” Keishin said. “Do you have any idea what your daughter’s been through just to be able to find you?”
“Kei.” Hana placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t.”
Toshio turned to Keishin. “I have devoted my life to teaching Hana to be better than this, training her to take over the pawnshop one day. And yet now she is here because she forgot one of the most important lessons I ever taught her.”
Hana stared into the reflection in her teacup. “Nothing is as it seems…”
“I ransacked the pawnshop and stole the choice so that the Shiikuin would have a story to believe about my disappearance,” Toshio said.
“Because you wanted them to think that you chased after a thief,” Keishin said.
“Yes.” Toshio turned to Hana. “But I also left another message, a message that I couldn’t risk putting into words.”
“Mother’s glasses by the door and the tea,” Hana said.
Toshio nodded. “I wanted you to know where I had really gone in case…”
Hana lowered her eyes. “In case you never came back.”
“I never meant to put you in any danger. Finding your mother was my duty, not yours. I taught you that appraising the choices brought to the pawnshop required detaching your emotions from your actions and thoughts. I had hoped that you could do the same when it came to examining your own decisions. You should not have tried to find me, Hana. You should have just let me go.” His voice filled with tears. “But you were always better at being a good and selfless daughter than a heartless thief who stole pieces of people’s souls.”
“Otou-san…” Hana wept.
“I’m sorry.” Toshio embraced her tightly and sobbed into her hair. “For everything.”
—
Her tea had gone cold when Hana ran out of tears. Still, she cupped it in her hands, trying to borrow some warmth. She could not think about her reunion with her mother without her insides turning to ice. “Where is she?”
“Your mother is taking care of the children,” Toshio said, his eyes swollen from the tears he had shed. “She will return at sunset.”
“The creature…” Hana said. “It called me its sister.”
“The children, ” Toshio said, emphasizing the word, “know all about you. Your mother speaks of you to them often. She hasn’t forgotten you, Hana. But…”
“But what?” Hana said.
“She has forgotten other things. The years here have changed her.”
“Changed her? How?”
“She created this copy of the pawnshop from memory, but she does not remember much else. She remembers our family, but she cannot recall the circumstances that led her here. She does not know that she stole a choice, or anything about the day the Shiikuin came to the pawnshop and changed her sentence from a swift, merciful death to exile here.” Toshio looked at Hana. “But I am guessing that you do. You followed the same clues I did to get here. Haruto must have folded time for you too.”
Hana flinched at the mention of Haruto’s name. She had come all this way to find someone who did not want to be found, and it was Haruto who had paid the price for her foolishness.
“What’s wrong?” Toshio said. “Did something happen to Haruto?”
Hana squeezed her teacup. “His hands…”
Toshio paled and clenched his fists. “Tell me what happened, Hana.”
“The Shiikuin broke them when they found out that Haruto was helping me.”
Toshio’s hands trembled on the table. “This is all my fault. I should have never gone to him. Haruto is too good and generous of a man, and I took advantage of his kindness.”
“It was his choice,” Keishin said. “He said that he owed you a great debt.”
Toshio swallowed back tears. “He owes me nothing. What I did for him was only to try to right a wrong that would never have happened if…”
“If what?” Hana said.
Toshio’s chest caved in as though he were shriveling from the inside. He walked away from the table looking more feeble and older than Hana had ever seen him.
“Otou-san?” Hana stood up and followed him.
“I failed him, Hana.”
“How?”
“One choice. One soul. It is a simple duty and I failed it. The choice your mother stole…it was meant for Haruto.”