Chapter - 20 ( end )

"I hate my brother!"

A little girl's shout echoes through the park.

The children playing in the sandbox and the adults sitting on the benches chatting turn to stare.

The girl doesn't care.

Her face is bright red and she stares straight ahead.

The boy, who is being stared at, shrugs it off without batting an eye and laughs.

"You know, Touka, that's a lie."

"I'm not lying, I really don't like that ... girl!"

"It's not true. If you really hate something, you don't say it outright."

He pats her on the shoulder and ruffles her hair gently.

"You actually like me, don't you?"

"...I don't like you."

The girl who denies it doesn't have the momentum she had before.

Her head is down and her tone is backward. She's kicking the dirt under her feet.

"Then why are you so angry just for playing with Miho? If you don't like her, you don't care about her?"

Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes.

The boy hunches his shoulders and smiles bitterly.

"Okay, okay, I won't leave you alone, so let's play together."

"No."

"Oh?"

"It's not that I don't want you to be alone..."

"Then what is it?"

"Toh, I want to play with Toukado alone..."

"Well, but Miho and I have a pact."

"No...!"

I glared at her with a sharper glare than before.

For a six-year-old, he was quite powerful.

"Okay," the boy sighs, finally giving in.

"I'll give in to your stubbornness for today."

"... Really?"

"Yes. But only this once. Do you understand? Don't ever ask me for the same thing again."

Touka nods and accepts, but as far as she can tell from the look in his eyes, he hasn't given in.

The boy sighs again, as if he knows it too.

"I don't know what to say, Touka's jealousy is weird..."

"It's normal."

"If that's the case, you'll be a stalker in the future."

"No."

"Really? How the hell did you know I was hanging out with Miho today? You should have been at home taking a nap. I can't see the park from my window, and...you pretended to be asleep and followed me?"

"I wouldn't do that."

She smiles secretly. That face made me feel nostalgic.

Kurumi often smiled like that too.

When I asked her, "Why are you smiling?" she wouldn't answer, so I kept it a secret.

Now, I have no way of knowing what it was.

... I walked over to the two of them, who were just beginning to reconcile after a scuffle, shaking off their memories.

"Oh, Dad!"

Touka comes running up to them. A small white flower blooms on his chest.

It's a metaphor, of course. But she looks a lot like her mother in this way.

Her expression softens naturally.

"I'm home."

"Come here!"

"Come to ...."

The boy is greeting me from a distance as he catches Touka who jumps into his arms.

There's a clear specification in his demeanor.

The metaphor is a rock. I look at it and it's hard. It seems like I haven't gotten used to it yet. I was a little disappointed.

"Kaito, wasn't Touka very annoying?"

Boy──Kaito says, "No, not really," and averts his eyes.

Sadness hides his cheeks. He's at an age where it's hard to gauge his distance from his stepfather.

Keeping a subtle distance from him, he begins to walk home.

On the way, Touka happily reports on the day's events.

"You know, I lied when I said I really dislike you, but it's true when I said I don't like you."

"Hmm... what? You lied about really disliking him and then said you didn't like him? That's weird, isn't it?"

"It's not weird, because..."

"I don't "like" you, I "like" you very much."

That night, the woman who appeared to be dead was still breathing.

The arriving paramedics put her on a stretcher and took her to a hospital in the city.

There, I realized she was none other than my childhood friend Kurumi Ayase.

Kurumi had apparently been hit by a truck a few hours earlier and brought to this hospital, but after her eye was treated and fixed in a cast, she disappeared while I was distracted.

It didn't seem to be an escape, and there was a big commotion, saying that it was a kidnapping.

A few hours later, the mystery of his back being stabbed with a kitchen knife at his junior's home, a few kilometers away from the hospital, left officials scratching their heads.

Given the circumstances, it was unbelievable that she could have traveled that distance at night and not been found by anyone.

Her eyes were damaged and bandaged from the truck accident, so she couldn't even see.

She was in a coma for days, and there were many dangerous situations.

When Kurumi finally made it over the hump and regained consciousness, her parents were so relieved that they cried, and I was relieved to hear the news and regained some of my appetite.

Kurumi regained consciousness, but her brain was damaged and she was unable to speak.

She can't speak or write, and she doesn't respond to anyone who speaks to her.

She had no hearing problems, so she was afraid of loud noises, but she smiled relaxedly when she heard soft music.

Her eyesight never returned.

Kurumi's loss of light has made it difficult for her to live without assistance.

The bones of her compound fractures in her hands and feet were still connected.

But Kurumi's rehabilitation was slow, as her coma left her weak and unable to communicate much due to her speech impediment.

She spent most of her time in bed.

Living as quiet as a plant. Whether that was happiness or unhappiness was unknown to others.

──The incident. The disturbance in which the two girls tried to kill each other was vaguely sorted out, leaving several unclear points.

No one was found guilty, no lawsuit was filed, and it was published in a small corner of the local newspaper, gossiped about in the high school we were attending at the time, and then promptly forgotten.

I was sitting on a needle in a haystack, but I felt like I had a cavity in the center of my heart, so no amount of vicious name-calling or metaphors piqued my interest.

Kurumi's parents believed I was responsible for their daughter's near-death experience, and for a time, I felt insulated.

The only thing that didn't happen was that Kurumi smiled sweetly every time I went to visit her.

Even before I open the door to her room, she senses my approach and becomes restless.

When I enter the room, her face blossoms like a flower.

Kurumi's parents couldn't help but feel a connection with me when they saw their daughter's face like that.

Kurumi always seems to be staring blankly at her home or school when she's not working.

It was strange for her to "look" when she couldn't see, but because of that, I always had the same old feeling that she was being watched.

Kurumi's metaphor also blossomed whenever I went to visit her.

A flower I'd seen much earlier, when we'd barely met---small, white, cool, and unassuming, like something you'd find on the side of the road.

It was the flower I had been hoping to find again.

When I saw it, I didn't feel strangely happy.

I felt a little dejected.

For the first time since its disappearance, I found myself both repulsed and fascinated by Kurumi's carnivorous or cannibalistic flowers.

There were times when I missed that poisonous crimson color, and I wept in front of her as she smiled broadly.

Don't laugh.

No matter how ugly, monstrous, and monstrous it looked.

It was undoubtedly the culmination of Kurumi's heart.

Seven years of everything was in that thing.

Even if I didn't have the vessel or the qualifications to accept it, I don't want to deny that.

After graduating from high school, I abandoned my path of further education and got a job.

The years flew by in the blink of an eye while I was working for nothing.

I was getting married. A woman three years my junior at work.

She was a hawk, but she had her own reasons, and she had her own struggles.

Just when I thought I wanted to share in that labor, I felt the frozen time begin to move.

Kaito is the woman's son.

He remembered his real father's face because of the railroad.

Because of the railroad, he remembers his real father's face, and even now, as his mother's remarried partner, he is not familiar with me.

It's not that he's against it, but there's a part of him that's trying to accept the situation.

Even the metaphors sometimes tremble like an owl's hoot. Clearly, he still needs time.

Touka is Kurumi's child. A test after she was hospitalized revealed that she was pregnant.

Needless to say, it was mine.

I hesitated whether to give birth or not.

It's hard to say that the mother's body is healthy, and I'm not sure about my own will.

Given the risks involved in giving birth, it's safer to abort.

If she kept it, she would be risking her life.

But she gave birth anyway, because even if she didn't speak, the way she looked at the life growing inside her with her unseeing eyes, still and loving, seemed to be pleading for her will.

It was a difficult birth.

I tried to prepare myself, but a storm raged in my heart.

I cursed myself for not being able to pray.

As expected, the birth, which ended in an "exchange of life and death," was bathed in tears of blessing and sincerity.

I named the child Touka, taking one character from Kurumi's name.

My proposal was accepted without a hitch.

As for the acquisition of her, it didn't go "smoothly," but after a series of twists and turns.

So Kaito and Touka are not related by blood.

That being said, they don't have any particular feuds, and despite the occasional argument, they get along well.

Aside from their stepfather, they don't seem to hesitate to open up to their half-sister.

I wonder if I should be happy.

Well, I guess I should be happy. Both Kaito and Touka are happy.

It would be absurd to complain.

What bothers me more than that is another man's child──

"Dad, that kid is following me again today."

Touka whispers as she glances behind her.

He looks back. There's a girl on the road a few dozen meters away.

She's about the same age as Touka.

Her gently wavy hair is black, and she's a stoic child.

What surprises you are her clear blue eyes.

It's the only thing that sets her apart from Japanese people and makes her stand out.

"I think he's been peeking this way since we were in the park."

Kaito says as he too stares.

"Whenever I try to approach it, it runs away."

"I wonder what it is."

Touka tilts her head as if she's genuinely puzzled.

"That's right..."

I nod in response.

A girl with black hair and blue eyes.

Her face immediately reminds me of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl I broke up with in that incident.

No──I wouldn't say reminds me.

It's too much like her.

I lost contact with Maya after the incident.

In the end, I was unable to fulfill her plea to "kill me," and instead pinned my hopes on preserving my life.

I left the arrow unwound. By the time I finished tourniqueting her leg, her eyes were closed and she was almost asleep.

As I held his hand and prayed for his survival, he whispered something strange in his sleep.

"Ah...."

Just one word. I listened closely, but all I could hear afterward was the sound of her faint breathing.

Naturally, my adoptive parents were not pleased with me, knowing that their daughter had been caught up in an unknown situation at home and nearly died.

I visited her in the hospital several times, but they never let me see her face-to-face.

No matter how desperately I asked, it was no use.

They didn't criticize me, they just ignored me completely.

As if I didn't exist in the first place.

The metaphors I saw were erasers and correction fluid.

At least she was still alive when I arrived at the hospital.

Even after that, I tried to use the scant information I had to determine her condition, but all I could find out was that she wasn't dead.

Later, information came in that the Araki family had left the village and moved somewhere in Kyushu.

I tried to call her cell phone, but it had already been canceled.

There's only one reason why I didn't take the situation so seriously.

The ivy she had wrapped around me didn't go away after we broke up.

I decided to take it as proof that she still felt strongly about me even though we were separated.

But the ivy that once wrapped around my entire body has shrunk over the years, until now it's just a single strand on my pinky finger.

It's a thin thread. But I'm grateful for it, just to let her know she's alive.

──It was around the time I learned of Kurumi's pregnancy that I realized that the ivy vines were beginning to bear fruit.

The fruit, which, like grapes, made a room and grew with each passing day, foreshadowed one thing, but I had no way of knowing. I was afraid to ask.

Perhaps if I asked the girl who now watched us from so far away, I might be able to unravel years of mystery.

But it didn't occur to me to do so.

Because I don't recognize the need to do so on purpose.

"Kaito."

"Yes?"

Kaito replied, sounding flustered by the suddenness of the call.

"...Why, stepfather."

I inwardly shrug my shoulders at the chilly sound of "father" and run my hand through my hair.

"Surely there will come a time when you will know his name."

There will be. I can see the rows of thorns surrounding her like citronella wire.

She seems to harbor very sharp feelings toward me.

But a strong guard is a sign of a strong heart.

The girl who is being guarded by the thorns is obviously a lonely personality who pretends to be strong.

Like her mother, who wrapped herself in armor or a cocoon.

"In the near future."

Yes. It's definitely not far away.

Kaito and Touka will soon take her name to heart.

"--Saya."

I wonder if it's spelled Saya.

The message Maya left that night. "Araki Saya."

Maya was an only child, and as far as I could tell, none of her relatives had that name.

Maya speculated that it might be the name of her unborn child....

Maya may have seen her daughter in a dream at that time.

And she called her the name she was thinking of giving her.

There's no proof. But.

The name of the Child of the Thorns──I was completely convinced, having felt the presence of a cause beyond fate.

Araki Saya. Hmm, not a bad sounding name. My heart leaps and I blush.

I restrained myself.

I think to myself as I grope for my ears.

Saya Toukawa, what kind of flower are you two blooming?

Beautiful flowers or ugly flowers?

I think quietly, longing for the bitter end of adolescence.

The sky is blue and high as I look up, holding hands with my children.

The breeze caressing my skin, the warmth of the sunlight piercing through, and the clouds drifting by made my heart skip a beat.

Even if I'm not the one who's facing those flowers.

Even if it's an invisible metaphor.

I can't help but look forward to it.

Touka approaching, Saya peeking from a distance.

Sowing seeds in the fertile fields, and the children's future that it opens.

I wish you happiness.

──From now on, I think I can understand how much I love people, Kurumi and Maya.