The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere 127: Got Away With It (

I can't recall exactly what happened after that, because the next 24 hours was a blur. I passed in and out of consciousness, beset by a mix of nightmares of what felt like actual hallucinations, mostly of past events. I only got out of bed to run to the lavatory, throw up, and gulp down water by the pint. My body was sweating constantly and violently, like I was literally undergoing so manner of physical tamorphosis.

I rember I kept dreaming that I was running down a long hallway from an ocean of black ooze, until it eventually swallowed whole, or turned into a grotesque, muscular monster and tore to pieces. I rember waking up in the middle of the night, shouting at the air to get away from , then being confused about where I was. I rember another dream where I was trapped in Shiko's room in her grandmas house, banging desperately on the door to the point that the bones of my fists cracked and splintered.

I rember a tidal wave laying waste to Itan, swallowing everything - all the schools both Shiko and I ever attended, her whole neighborhood, the Isiyalahs' old house, the entire downtown - and crushing like an insect as I stood on the beach. I rember standing behind Shiko and crying out her na over and over, only for her to completely ignore , refusing to look at my face-- And also staring at my old face, and being unable to look away, no matter how hard I tried.

I rember feeling in horrible pain, and waking up in tears. I rember the sense of violation, of everything being ruined. I rember pleading for it to stop, that this had been a mistake, and trying to center myself and purge foreign intrusion from my thoughts-- But not who 'myself' at the ti actually was. I rember being frightened and shocked over and over again, unable to process what was happening.

But most of all, I rember my mind tying itself in knots. Ideas and mories swirling and intersecting, their contradictions slamming against one another over and over until I felt ntally spent. Often I couldn't even put into words what was contradictory, they just... Were, viscerally. Like thorns stuck under my skin that I couldn't dig out.

But eventually, my thoughts softened, and the dreams beca more peaceful. I relived what felt like Shiko and I's earliest mories, but from contrary perspectives. I sat in the loft of the foster ho crying alone into my books, and felt empty and sad. I played in my mother's garden with my childhood friends, and felt carefree. I t my grandfather for the first ti on a trip to the museum. I watched my father leave for the last ti, just after he'd told he'd try to make ti to visit in a couple of months.

I rembered, for just a fleeting mont, my real mother's face. I carried sothing on my back as I walked through the rain.

Then, finally, there was nothing. Just the darkness of the deepest sleep.

By the ti my eyes opened, I'd just been having a normal, nonsense dream about having the power to turn into a dog. I felt so calm and ordinary that, until my thoughts ca into focus, it was like nothing had even happened. As though I could drift back to sleep until it was light out, and it would be an ordinary day. I think I might have even been smiling.

But as my eyes opened to face the off-white of the ceiling, I rembered.

It was strange. Looking back on it, my mind must have triggered so sort of trauma response, because there was no sense of confusion or surprise like there'd been at the clinic. I felt very conscious of my body - the way it pressed against the duvet, the shape of my fingers and mouth, the feeling of my throat as air passed through it for each breath - but this ti it all felt strikingly ordinary and natural, more along the lines of what I'd originally imagined when I'd been idealizing the prospect as my old self. And all the earlier stress and confusion was just... gone. Vanished.

I was calm. Almost preternaturally so.

I glanced at the clock at my bedside. It was just coming up on 8:00 PM on Saturday; over a full day had passed. My muscles felt relaxed but a little off; like they are when your body has just finished purging an illness.

I rolled my head back and, still not fully awake, returned to the question I'd asked myself when I'd awoken in the clinic.

Who am I?

In my mind, it was like 'I' - as in my conscious, self-aware spark of fundantal cognition, bereft of any wider sense of self - was standing in front of a table with two unmatching gloves in front of . The first, on the right, represented Utsu. If I willed it... Or rather, lifted it up and began to slip my hand inside... My mind begun to fill with her thoughts. The books and shows she was watching, her howork which she really needed to have started by now, her day-to-day worries about her friends and their lives-- That sort of thing. And if I pushed my hand in deeper, letting my fingers slide up the cloth to the tips, her whole personality on a much more foundational level. Her curiosity and social anxiety. Her specific feelings about her family and friends. Her loneliness and desperate desire to please. Her strange sense of humor.

Actually, it's worth elaborating on the 'specific feelings' part, because I rember being surprised at how different Utsu's feelings of love for her friends and family were from the ones my old self had been for her, because not only were her feelings far more subdued (or, well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say less psychotic) but also surprisingly self-conscious and utilitarian. If you rember giving that lecture about love being primarily about the fulfillnt of needs, that's probably mostly from her. My old self would never have even been able to put why they felt empty hearing their father's platitudes about their mother's love into words.

The more I stretched that glove on, the more the room I was lying in felt like my bedroom, and the situation I was in beca profoundly disturbing despite trying to avoid thinking about it. Still, it felt obvious that if I donned this glove tightly, I would for all intents and purposes be Utsushiko of Fusai, even in my own thoughts. The two were so distinct that it felt like I could probably go hours without even rembering the other glove existed.

...yet, it did exist. The second glove, on my left, obviously represented my old self. And if I donned it instead, the sa thing happened with that identity. Alongside the room I was in feeling more and more alien, the events and feelings rushing through as I'd sat with Samium that night felt more and more vivid the further it slipped up my hand, as did the years of pain preceding it. I felt the rancid flavor of those foul emotions on my mouth, the sha and loathing and hate, the morbid sense of my own inhumanity...

...but then, as the glove began to slip on fully, realization, joy, and relief.

There was sothing about the second glove that made its relationship to distinct from the first. Even when I took it off, it was like there was little bit of it, a thread, that remained stuck to my hand, to sothing deeper in my psyche. It was enough to make intuitively think, 'this glove is a part of . This is my true self.' So... That was the answer. I was 'Kuroka'.

Yet despite that feeling self-evident, the '' that existed independent of the gloves still had its own traits; people aren't just their mories, after all. The way I ford thoughts, even down to this weird abstract glove thing, was different. It wasn't sothing Kuroka would have co up with at all.

No, you probably would have found an even creepier and more possessive way to put it, so part of thought.

This shouldn't have been a surprise; Samium had explained as much before the procedure. 'You will experience a stronger emotional connection to your episodic mory and her semantic mory respectively. Combined with the fact that the pneuma does not store implicit mory at all, that should result in an outco where your mannerisms and manner of thought more closely resemble her own, but your present identity retains primacy.'

In other words, the 'episodic mory' of my old self's life evoked a stronger emotional response in , and so felt more like my own. But everything else belonged to Shiko-- Uh, Utsu. Semantic mory was knowledge; language, numbers, concepts. And then there was muscle/procedural mory, and, well, the whole rest of the body. That was why I hadn't been able to reproduce my old handwriting.

So... You could say that though the second glove had that connection to my inner self... It actually fit much worse. Yet even understanding that intellectually, I couldn't internalize the idea that I was just Utsushiko of Fusai with soone else's mories. It felt self-evidently delusional.

Finally, I could also put on both gloves at once, though I could tell that even attempting to do so would be overwhelming... And the first glove filled , the '' that existed in the absence of self, with a sense of deep foreboding. Like whatever was there would only bring unhappiness.

So for ti being, I put on the second glove.

And I gasped, suddenly feeling shocked.

I sat up in my bed, and looked around the room. The walls were painted a pale blue, while the carpet was the darker shade. I was lying on a bed with fuchsia sheets which was situated against the center of the back wall of the room. In front of was a cushioned platform covered in stuffed animals, to my left a logic engine with a shelf of echo mazes and a small sofa, and to my right a bookcase, dresser, and mirror. Oh, and the door to the bathroom.

The house was quiet, save for the occasional bubbling noise from the water clock and the distant sounds of the city proper-- Though my eyesight was sowhat worse, my hearing was a lot better, since I'd always suffered from slight tinnitus from dental issues my seed had. I wasn't capable of my surroundings truly surprising with the mories I now possessed, but I still stared dumbfounded for over a minute, holding the bedsheets close to my chest.

Then... After a while, and only softly at first... I started to laugh. Then I laughed hysterically, unable to control myself, my whole bed bouncing up and down with each heave. Eventually the laughter morphed into joyful sobs. I held my hands over my eyes, tears streaking down my face.

I was so, so relieved.

It's alright, I said to myself. It's finally alright.

Everything will be alright now.

You're finally yourself. You're finally where you're supposed to be.

I cried more and more, until I was sobbing relentlessly, unable to control myself. It was just like I'd hoped for. I was still myself, but I was also Shiko-- Not an imposter, but the real her, unarguably and and indistinguishably. I could stop being '' whenever I wished to at a mont's notice, or replace all the rotten parts of myself piece by piece at whatever pace I desired. I could beco the person I'd always desired to be, not just on the outside, but the inside, as well. I could be complete.

It kept sinking in over and over that this wasn't just another escapist fantasy. This was just who I was now; my new existence. I was free. Free...

I felt like a trendous weight, one I'd not even been able to conceptualize before, had been finally lifted from my shoulders.

I sniffled, drying my nose with the duvet.

What now?

I looked around the room again, staring at all the petty luxuries I'd pined over for decades which I now owned, and realized I had no idea.I could follow through on all the fantasies I'd had, sure, but now that I was like this it felt as though they'd mostly lost their appeal. If I avoided touching the first glove at all, then maybe it would still be sort of like I imagined, but the idea just felt like carrying the a bad sll from my old life into this new one.

And even if I did, what would co next? I'd been so preoccupied with abstract idea of what I was doing that I'd never paid much thought to the future. And even before this, I'd had no concrete dreams beyond a vague desire to go out into the world and beco soone like Shiko, which... Well, to say that was redundant now was an understatent. So where would I go from here on out?

I slid out of bed, realizing my underclothes were now quite gross on account of the fact that I hadn't fully undressed, and walked around the room for a little bit. I touched the stuffed animals, feeling each of their unique textures. I looked at her books, reading the titles and flipping through the according mories of their contents. I attuned to the logic bridge, and sohow felt even more strange seeing it display Utsushiko's ID and all her ssages than I did about, well, everything else. I fished through her mind for a show she'd been keeping up with and watched for a few minutes, just to marvel at how strange the experience was.

This is my stuff, I rember thinking over and over. I own this.

After that, I looked at so other things which are unwholeso and I don't wish to admit. Then, finally, I wandered over to the full-length mirror I'd ended up staring into the previous day before I'd passed out.

Once again, I looked at my reflection. At Utsu's face; my face. I leaned in close, to the point I could see the pores. I felt a vague tingling and a sense of unease.

It's worth taking a mont to discuss explicitly what a prosognostic event actually is. They aren't just sothing that organically happens as a result of two people having the sa seed; if that were the case, distinction treatnt wouldn't do anything to offset them, since it's not like the human brain has any natural chanism to swell up upon seeing a certain type of face. Rather, they're a band-aid solution implented into human biology by the Ironworkers to make contact paradoxes - obviously much more serious crises - less likely. Well, into human neurology, to be more specific.

The exact physical chanism is sothing to do with a engineered nerve that runs from the left fusiform gyrus directly to the spine, but the psychological chanism, or at least the rough version, is that when the mind senses sothing off about the recognition of one's own face that's normally ant to occur when one looks into a mirror or other reflective surface, it causes the blood to surge into a skull at a high volu, as if it were wounded. When combined with the surge of cellular energy that occurs when two people with the sa seed are in proximity, this process speeds to a fever pitch, causing swelling around the brain. The idea is that this hopefully causes the two people about to touch one another to pass out before they get the chance to do so, preventing catastrophe, even if it sotis causes a little brain damage along the way.

But of course, even the Ironworkers were human (more or less), so they hadn't had the foresight to predict things like distinction treatnts that might fuck it all up. Or, for that matter, Witches.

This content has been unlawfully taken from ; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Though I wouldn't understand what was happening for so ti, seeing Utsushiko's face in the mirror upset my mind. It was and not- at the sa ti. My complexion shifted as blood rushed from my cheeks to my upper sinuses.

I noticed that the sensation magnified or dimd based on how I was wearing the gloves. If loosened the second glove and pulled up the first instead, it dimd sowhat as the sense of 'this is my face' intensified. Funnily, it also faded if I did the opposite, though in that case it was more about feeling so disconnected from what reflected in the mirror that my brain seed to conclude I was wearing so freakish full-body costu. It was only really bad when both were on to a significant degree at once.

The experience was disturbing. Still, I didn't look away.

It was funny, how different it felt--- Almost literally funny, to the point I let out a single, strained laugh. I'd spent so much of my old life thinking of Shiko as the most immaculate, beautiful person in the world, like she was Helen of Troy. Even when I'd t other people my age who'd undergone high-end distinction treatnt at secondary school, she'd still sohow outshone them all.

But gods, she... I... looked like such a ss.I hadn't properly untied my braids before I'd collapsed in bed, so one side my hair had got nightmarishly tangled in a bizarre shape around the contortions of the ribbon, while the other had fallen loose entirely, resting at such an odd angle that the roots themselves hurt. There were bags under my eyes, and my lips with chapped. I looked sick.

Seeing my face like that, combined with the perspective I now possessed, I realized just how much of a pedestal I'd been putting her on for so many years. Utsushiko just looked like an normal, sowhat-pretty girl. She looked a lot a lot better than my old self - not that saying that ant much - but had kind of an underdeveloped face, with a weak chin and a large forehead. With her hair down and no glasses, she looked like the kind of person who'd be cast to play a ghost in a horror drama.

It's why I always wear braids, I realized. It's better to look childish than weird.

I shuddered suddenly. It felt disquieting, to evaluate her appearance like this. The more I acted like a voyeur, the more my mind seed to catch itself in a dissonant feedback loop, recoiling from its own thoughts like a body rejecting a transplanted organ.

That's , I reminded myself. It's your own face. Of course you're supposed to feel normal about your own face.

I swallowed, my throat dry.

...anyway, it made sense. After all, her face had been designed to look like soone from the old world, even if she'd never known it. Her grandfather's goal would be fidelity, not pure aesthetics, as it was in a lot of cases.

I'd loved her so much I'd never been able to even see her clearly. Not just on the outside, but the inside, as well. Her soul wasn't so sparkling diamond that existed on a higher plane to my own. It, too, was ordinary. I could feel the first glove sitting there, on my fingertips, and knew that if I put it fully on, the last of my illusions about her would shatter completely, leaving only mundane reality.

Had I known it would be like this? I had to have. It wasn't like Shiko really was so kind of goddess. I had to know that, once our mories were united, I wouldn't exactly be able to revel in the joy of having transcended my old self. It would just feel like . No, it was . I just... Wasn't thinking about it, right now.

Maybe the fact it was so hard to wrap my head around was why my brain had broken the situation down into this weird binary glove thing. It kept my mind from feeling like it was going to shatter from the contradictions in its own existence. But I could tell it was only for the ti being. Each ti I reached deep into the second glove, a little bit remained stuck to . And I knew the sa would be true for the other, as well.

Though probably for the best, it... Frightened , a bit.

I wanted to pretend for just a little longer. To savor this perverse, awful triumph.

I kept staring at the mirror. I made various facial expressions, familiar and unfamiliar. A gentle smile. A grimace. A mocking stuck-out tongue. I spun a little on the spot, looking all over my body.

It was pathetic, but I thought about... Making her say sothing. Or, more accurately, saying sothing to myself. Maybe having her say that she was sorry, or that she loved . Or just reciting so of the sa comforting words that she'd always spoken to when we were were friends, the words I'd co to miss so much it hurt.

You're smarter then you give yourself credit for, Kuroka!

I'm here for you if you need anything, Kuroka.

Are you gonna co hang out after school today?

I'll be out on the porch with all the books.

I'm glad to be your friend.

I'm glad...

Sohow, it still hurt. My mind went back to the dock that day, to the mont I saw her walking away for the last ti. My eyes grew wet. I had to remind myself. No, it's alright! You don't need to be sad any more.

Look. She's here now.

I tried to smile into the mirror, but the expression ca out strange and forced. That sense of dissonance rose sharply in again.

You're together. We're together.

"I-I'm here..." I said, the soft words forming awkwardly on my tongue. "Kuro...ka..."

But as I spoke, the first glove slipped further up my hand. And I realized, or rather rembered, what Utsushiko really thought about my old self.

How small a part of her life I'd been even when we were friends. How frustrated and tired I'd made her feel when everything had fallen to pieces. How little she thought about nowadays at all, first on purpose and then without even trying. And how even my most radiant mories of our friendship had been nothing extraordinary to her, because she'd been doing the sa stuff with at least 3-4 other people.

What had seed like the grand tragedy of my young life had been nothing but a small, sad annoyance for her. It wasn't even that she'd moved on; there hadn't been that much to 'move on' from in the first place.

Seeing my old self from the outside was profoundly upsetting. Even as I'd thought my life was worthless, I'd always held on to a shred of my pride. But now I could see how creepy and stupid I'd co across as the whole ti. How obvious and crude my attempts to manipulate her for attention and affection had been. How terribly I'd read the room when she'd been struggling with all her built-up work. How ridiculous and almost frightening I'd been on that last day we'd t, the resentnt and anxiety in as I felt obligated to apologize over and over, my face red...

A Sunday where I'd turned off my logic engine to avoid the possibility of a conversation. A night where I'd spent 20 minutes complaining about my old self being overbearing to Yu, and then going over-the-top deriding my opinion on a drama we'd watched to make myself better. A school day where they wouldn't stop trying to approach for another sad, forced conversation, and I almost wanted to go ho to get away.

A bitter twitch struck my face. I turned away from the mirror, my face contorted into a strange look.

I knew I'd been pathetic. I knew I'd been thoughtless. But... I always thought that she understood why I was doing it, on so level. That even if our perspectives had been sadly different, she felt so of the sa pathos, the sa aching sentintality I did.

I never realized how banal and tedious my shitty behavior had been. That in the end, I'd been nothing but a common creep.

I stood silently for a while. Then I laughed again, grim and low.

Of course it would be like this, I thought. You've always been alone. You've always had nothing. Why would anyone be surprised that a plant growing in a tiny pot of rotten soil would sprout wilted and ugly?

Your soul was rotten and small from the start.

And... Now I'd done this. I'd refused to let it go, and committed a cri against her personhood that there wasn't even a word for.

I'd been monstrous.

And yet, you haven't completely stopped smiling.

I felt a chill co over , and I huddled my arms together, covering my body. I could feel Shiko's sense of self on the other side of my own, curving into at the corners, like a coin with a sanded-down rim.

Even with these thoughts, you're not truly guilty, are you? Rather, I'm not truly guilty.

This isn't '' feeling regret. This is everything I ever wanted. The realization of my dream.

No.

What 'I'm' feeling right now, in this mont... This is Shiko's despair. Despair at having having stolen everything from her. At soone she thought she'd left behind doing sothing so unspeakably horrible she could never have even conceived of it.

I just can't tell the two apart any longer.

A rush of adrenaline shot through , along with a complicated, confusing sense of contemptful anxiety. I covered my face with my hands, feeling like I wanted to scream out at the open air. It was bitter. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

So what if I am?! I shouted into my own head.

You never even cared about ! NO ONE ever cared!

Did you just want to lie down and die?!

Fuck you! You never understood!!

The world gave nothing but mud and ash, and no one ever ca to save ! So I saved myself, took it for myself, with my own two hands! And it's finally mine! It's all mine, and there's nothing you can do!!

How does it feel, huh?! How does it feel to be so weak?! To have to watch soone else be happy?!

But the words just fell back upon , piercing with self-disgust. The more I indulged the feeling, the more it felt like it would swallow whole, dissolving the structure of my mind like water washing against walls of salt. I scratched at my scalp madly, my muscles tensing all over my body.

No, this isn't . This isn't ...

I was going to save her, to... To...

I pulled both gloves away, and closed my eyes, trying to distance myself from everything, to numb everything. Burying those painful, contradictory feelings.

That's not .

That's not .

That's not ...

I breathed slowly, in and out. Slowly, calm returned.

Everything was okay. I was the only person here, and I wasn't in any danger. Just standing in my room, in silence, staring at the mirror.

All the rest... Were just thoughts. Montary feelings flashing through my mind, unable to alter the immutable physical fact that, from now on, nothing more would hurt . Everything would be alright.

I stayed there for a few more monts, then wandered aimlessly over to the window, finding myself crying again, but this ti much more softly. I shook my head, then looked up, staring at the stars and the glimr of cities on the other side of the Mimikos. They were harder to make out here than they'd been in Oreskios on account of the lights from downtown, but it all seed so much more radiant and beautiful regardless. mories of all the nights I'd looked up at them from this spot flowed into my mind, all the way back from when I was a little girl. Of staring at the horizon without having to be afraid.

I felt more at ease, then I cast my eyes down, looking at the dimly-lit flower garden that covered most of the yard. Against that darkness, I saw my face in the glass again - as I would in every reflective surface again, until the day I died - but being fainter and harder to make out, it felt like it was provoking less of an existential crisis.

I reached out, trying to touch it kindly.

It's alright, I said to myself.

You've just misunderstood things a little, that's all.

I'd thought of my old self as the main character of a story. That my years of solitude and struggle had been building to so grand mont of transcendence and catharsis. I'd convinced myself this was my fate.

But that wasn't it at all. I'd never been anything but a side character-- No, a mistake, an anomaly-- No. Not even that.

That life... That whole life, had been nothing but a aningless nightmare that I'd had just now. I'd caught sothing funny at the clinic on the way ho from school and the fever had overco before I'd had a chance to call back in and get it cured. I'd hallucinated an alternate life where everything had been twisted, ford out of my bad mories from when I'd been living in Itan.

Yeah, that was it. It had felt real, but it had all just been nothing but a disturbing fantasy. And by the ti the morning ca, it would all have disappeared. Faded away, forgotten.

Holding that lie in my mind, I started to cheer up again. I pulled the first glove on more and more firmly, letting the second slide down to the fingers.

And if it wasn't a nightmare, and sothing of that person does remain, I thought, then it's fine, too. This is the best fate soone like could have asked for. To surrender my will, and embrace all of her hopes and dreams as my own until I lt away into nothingness.

I'm sure that whatever remains of will be smiling. I'll keep just enough to savor the taste of that happiness.

I pulled the first glove on tightly, and let Utsushiko's mind overwhelm my own, while holding just enough of the second to transpose her horror with gentle bliss. I smiled strangely and with a tinge of embarrassnt, brushing aside all problematic thoughts.

Then I stated my new 'truth'.

I got a little sick yesterday after school, and ended up sleeping all day with a migraine.

I just woke up, and now I feel better.

But I'm behind on what I was aning to do today.

I should get started right now.

And so I did.

I caught up with my ssages properly - it had been 24 hours, after all, and outright missed a drama club thing I was supposed to have gone to the previous day. Iwa was probably mad at . My best friend, Iwa. I wrote an apologetic reply for her and a few other people, then headed to the bathroom and took a shower. When I was done, I realized I was ravenously hungry, so I ordered so khian food for delivery. I started on so of my howork while I waited for the golem, then when it arrived, took it up to my room and did the rest over my logic bridge while catching up on so shows I'd been watching. I stayed up until 3 in the morning getting it all done, since my sleep pattern was screwed up and there was nothing else to do at night.

I went to bed and slept peacefully for about 6-7 hours. I got dressed properly and caught up with my ssages again, this ti getting into a long chat with Yu, first about a project the math club was doing, then about a graphic novel series we'd both been reading. I made a quick breakfast and did a little work on said project, then took a break and played echo gas - slipping a little and deciding to replay one my old self had been really excited about, then feeling strange and switching to a puzzle ga I'd been playing for the first ti recently instead - until I heard the door opening downstairs as my parents ca ho.

"Utsu, we're back," my mother called out.

I went down the stairs to greet them. My little brother, whose clothes were dirty from his trip, ran past on the stairs, brushing against my leg and he rushed up to his room. I stared at him strangely for a mont.

"Sukunoro, don't shove past your sister like that," my mother said, then scoffed as she realized he'd already barrelled out of earshot.

"Little brat has too much energy left," my dad said, chuckling to himself. "Must have been a pretty dull trip."

"The camp master said he spent the whole ti sulking. He just likes his gas better than being outside," my mother comnted idly as she hung up her coat

"Maybe I should cut off the hydraulics to his room."

"I'll hold an expensive funeral after he stabs you in your sleep," she replied flatly, then turned her head up to face . "How was your weekend, Utsu?"

As my old self, I'd always known Shiko's mother - Kataoka - as being soone polite yet stern, who I could sense on so level didn't really like . There was always this coldness to her, this stiffness and judgental quality that never faded. She treated kindly, relatively, but that kindness was always highly conditional and limited.

I'd always been a little afraid of her, to tell the truth.

But the look on her face, even in that fleeting mont, was so different from any of that. So casual and relaxed, but also genuinely caring. She really did want to know how I was feeling. And there was an underlying affection, a sense of her being happy to see that wasn't influenced by how I behaved at all.

And... I felt the sa way. in spite of those old sentints still lingering in part of my mind, Utsushiko's unconditional feelings were what rose to the surface. I cared about her. And probably always would.

Ah, I thought.

So this is what it's like to have a mother.

I'm... Really no longer an orphan.

"Kat, I'm gonna unpack the groceries," my dad said, stepping off to the left with a bunch of bags. "I picked up so chocolates for you and your brother, Utsu. I'm leaving out here-- Your box is the one with all the nutty stuff he hates."

She glanced back towards him for a second. "You need to decide if you're coddling him or not." She turned back towards . "Utsu, did you--"

I embraced her in a hug, wrapping my arms tightly around her chest. I let my head lull forward, leaning against her shoulder, and felt the warmth of her body.

"Wh-- Utsu, what's this?" She laughed nervously, though quickly returned the hug. "Did sothing happen?"

After a mont or two, I got my bearings again and made up so dumb excuse for behaving strangely, saying I'd been reading a really emotional book where the protagonists mother died or sothing. She'd told to stop acting silly, and then her dad had co in and asked why I'd given her the hug despite him being the one to have brought ho a gift. My mother mocked him a bit, and I gave him a more half-hearted hug as a joke. Then we chatted about their trip for a little while, split up, then reconvened a little later to go out to eat. We went to one of the restaurants just down the street, and I had a platter of seafood and fried vegetables. And I barely thought about my old self at all, except to quietly note every ti I checked off one of her dreams, and laugh at the miracle of her life having been nothing but a dream, dead and gone and obliterated.

And the next morning, I woke up, put on my uniform, and smiled brightly at how nice I looked. I took the tram back up the hill to school. I caught up with my friends during morning classes, went to club, and easily aced a mock exam, almost shocked at how quick and effortless it felt with my new brain. Everyone praised . Everyone was kind to . And then afterwards Iwa and I went out to a cafe so she could catch up on the day I missed.

And so it was the next day, and the day after that. And through it all, there was an unceasing spark in my heart.

I lost myself in a person I wasn't, and rejoiced.

My first sin was not rely that I killed Utsushiko of Fusai. That itself was not beyond repentance.

My first sin was that, for an entire year afterwards, I was happy.