Chapter Fifty-Four The Reflection in the Mirror
Chapter Fifty-four
The Reflection in the Mirror
The mirror shattered on the pawnshop’s floor, scattering jagged pieces of the truth in every direction. Keishin stared at the shards. It was almost funny how his strange adventure with Hana began and ended with broken glass. When they met, Hana had cut her foot on one of the broken pieces littered across the pawnshop. Now she had stabbed him with the sharpest of them in his back. He looked down, expecting to see it poking out of his chest, but it had lodged in his heart, shredding him from the inside with every breath he took.
He finally understood why the weather had never liked him. He had always lived in a world that didn’t want him there. He pulled Chiyo’s glasses from his face. “When did you know?” he said, unable to look at Hana.
“The second I opened the pawnshop’s front door and saw you,” Hana said. “My mother’s glasses revealed who you were: the brightest choice I had ever seen.”
“You knew who I was all this time and you didn’t say anything?” Keishin balled his hands into fists.
“I told you when we met that the only answers I could ever give were lies. But I gave you every chance to walk away. I…pushed you away.”
“So you’ve been planning to hand me over to the Shiikuin all this time? Why didn’t you just do it when they first showed up at the pawnshop? Why run? Why go through all of the trouble of keeping up this charade?”
“Because I did not know what had happened to my father. You were the only thing that I could use to bargain with the Shiikuin. I could not deliver you to them if I did not know what I was even negotiating for.”
“And now you do.”
Hana dropped her eyes.
“Is this really what you want, Hana?” Toshio said. “This is not who you are.”
“Isn’t this what you always wanted me to be? Someone who could lock away her emotions and close a deal without the slightest remorse? You taught me not to make my mother’s mistake, to never allow my heart to drive me to take what was never meant to be mine.”
“But are your emotions truly locked away?” Toshio said. “Today I saw something in your eyes that I had never seen before. I watched you grow up with Haruto and not once did you look at him the same way you look at this man you are about to betray.”
“What I feel and who I care about does not matter. That is what you have told me all my life. Duty comes first. Always.”
“Look around you, Hana,” Toshio said. “You are not in the pawnshop anymore. We are in an illusion we conjured. We built the bars of this prison and created our own jailers. Have you thought about what would happen if we stopped?”
“Stopped?” Hana said.
“This cycle. What if we stopped giving the Horishi’s ink and the Shiikuin power over our lives? What if we stopped collecting souls? That baby in Masako’s arms was no different from you, and yet we believed that it did not… could not have a soul because the Horishi had no ink to dictate its life. Our world buries babies like Haruto alive because we are afraid that we cannot control them. We bury them because they are different and then wonder why they become monsters. And then when the monsters— our fears —grow up…”
“They come back to control us,” Hana said.
“And the cycle goes on,” Toshio said. “And so I am going to ask you again. Is this really what you want to do?”
A loud banging on the door thundered over Toshio’s voice.
Chiyo fell to her knees and clasped her hands over her ears. “They’re here. They’ve come to sentence me. They’re here to take me away. Toshio, I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave…” Chiyo stared at Hana and blinked as though trying tosee clearly through a fog. “Hana. It’s you. You’re here. You’re really here.”
“Okaa-san…” Hana trembled as a dam broke open inside her. A lifetime of loneliness burst out in a flood of hot tears.
The banging on the door grew louder.
Toshio ran to the door and pressed his back against it. “Choose, Hana.”
“Wait.” Chiyo grabbed a knife from the counter and sliced her arm. “Hana must know the truth.”
“Stop!” Hana screamed.
Chiyo dug into the wound with her fingers and pulled out a small blue orb. A tiny ocean glowed inside it. Chiyo pressed the pearl into Hana’s hand. “Take this.”
The door shook violently.
“Choose, Hana.” Toshio pushed his back against the door.
“Otou-san…” Hana wept. “I won’t leave you.”
“This is not about me, Hana. Don’t you see? I am already dead. I knew where this path would end when I decided that even just one day with your mother was better than another year of not knowing where she was.”
“We made our choice, Hana.” Chiyo held Hana in her arms. “Now it is time to make yours.”
“No,” Keishin said, “it isn’t.”
Hana turned to him, her eyes brimming. “I—”
“This is my choice.” Keishin strode toward the door.
Hana grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
“I was never meant to be here. I’m a regret. A mistake someone wished to forget.” He pulled away from her and looked at Toshio and Chiyo. “But I can make things right.”
A talon broke through the pawnshop’s door and ripped Toshio’s shoulder. Toshio crumpled forward and groaned, clutching the wound. Chiyo screamed.
“Do it now, Hana,” Keishin said. “Make your trade.”
Hana sprinted to the door, half-blind from tears.