Early morning, apartment.
Rikuo opened his eyes, the sky outside the bed gradually brightening. But he didn't wake up naturally; he was woken by the phone ringing.
"Damn it, who's calling me in broad daylight?"
He took out his phone and saw the note: Sakiko-sensei.
"Oh, it's fine then. It seems there's a message too?"
Rikuo saw 3 missed calls from the number noted as 'Sakiko-sensei', and 1 Line message:
"Rikuo, Wakaba Takafumi's side needs me to take care of some things today too, so I've left your bento on the windowsill."
"Oh, it really was Wakaba Takafumi who did it! How could Sakiko-sensei be wrong!"
Wakaba Takafumi: Yes, I also started the Battle Fight.
...
Asukayama Park.
"Rikuo, you should be awake now, right? Because an Anomaly appeared in Asukayama Park, just in case, I had to take the morning off to investigate."
Sakiko looked at Rikuo's Line interface on her phone, shook her head, and pulled herself together.
"Shima Noboru-san said to ask my own heart. I already beat up Father yesterday, but I didn't feel any awakening of the Ace of Hearts or anything. Since it's about asking my own heart, is my old home also one of the clues?"
Sakiko had already changed into her disguise. After her contact with Shima Noboru, Sakiko found that she seemed to be able to sense the aura of Anomalies as well. She thoroughly searched Asukayama Park when she entered, but didn't feel any Anomaly's aura. She only saw the corroded ground and the breached courtyard wall.
"The day before yesterday, it was too late. I didn't even notice how exaggerated Rikuo's battle marks were, and he was surrounded from all sides, it must have been very dangerous, right? Speaking of which, this seems to be the first time Rikuo ran away in a frontal battle."
Because it was the most familiar path in Sakiko's memory, any subtle change could be observed.
Before long, Sakiko walked to the courtyard gate deepest in her memory.
"...I thought that after Rikuo told me to walk my own path, I wouldn't come here anymore. However, this also counts as what Rikuo said, carrying the past."
Sakiko still had the keys to this house; she only left because she wanted to prove herself to her grandfather. The only one ever kicked out was her father.
Standing in front of the iron fence, her fingertips touched the 'Togawa' characters on the nameplate. In the untended courtyard, wild roses entwined around a broken-armed statue of the Virgin Mary, and the fountain accumulated slightly stained rainwater.
"...I'm home."
No response. Only the sound of raindrops hitting the tin roof, like a countdown.
"It's raining, isn't it?"
Sakiko looked at the sky; just a moment ago, it was sunny and bright, but suddenly it became dark and sorrowful.
"Is this the Ace of Hearts space?"
She lifted her rain-soaked boots and kicked open the decaying oak door.
Dust danced in the slanted light, and the full-length mirror in the entryway reflected her current appearance.
A convenience store uniform jacket over a second-hand suit, her originally delicate sky-blue hair faded like withered willow, her face covered with wrinkles, as if mocking a loser.
"What is this? The future? Is it the future after I choose to resist fate? Then it must be a fabricated future!"
Sakiko looked at the full-length mirror in the entryway, she sneered at herself in the mirror.
"So ugly. But, even if I'm like this, Rikuo would still like me, right? Or rather, it's the me who chooses to give in that isn't worthy of Rikuo."
Sakiko felt that her reflection in the mirror was no longer ugly; those ugly wrinkles, the cheap suit, now seemed like medals of honor.
Sakiko continued forward; a faint light seeped from the crack under the piano room door at the end of the corridor. Sakiko gripped the 7 of Spades in her hand, because it was a relic of Rikuo's father, she felt it could give her strength, in all aspects.
She slowly pushed the door open.
Ding~
A single out-of-tune C major note.
A 13-year-old "Togawa Sakiko" sat in front of the grand piano, her pure white dress spotless. She was playing the unfinished initial melody of "Ave Mujica."
"You're late."
Little Sakiko didn't even lift her head.
"Future me, why did you choose to become like this? Why not just abandon that useless father?"
Sakiko leaned against the doorframe.
"Did you make me come here just to mock my pathetic state?"
"No."
The child's fingers pressed an inharmonious chord.
"It's to show you this."
A diary lay open on the piano stool, a page turned to read:
[Today, the company Grandfather assigned Father to manage lost money again. But it doesn't matter, Mother said Father is a sincere person, and as long as he works hard, he will definitely succeed.]
The rain suddenly grew heavier, and the diary turned to a new page:
[Today, Mother passed away. Everyone is very sad, and Mutsumi even showed emotion for once. Father said he would work hard. I really believe in Father! Because Mother said Father is a very sincere person.]
A vase in the corridor shattered, and amidst the flying glass, the scene shifted to a deep memory:
[Rainwater dripped from Sakiko's hair, spreading a dark stain on the concrete. Togawa Kiyotsugu lay at her feet, the sour smell of alcohol mixed with evaporating rainwater, like rotten oranges.
"...Father."
She knelt down, her fingertips touching his feverish forehead. This man, who once wore a custom suit and applauded her in concert halls, now lay curled like a puddle of mud in the accumulated water outside the police station.
"Sakiko... I'll... try hard..."
He mumbled, repeating himself, as if this phrase were some magical incantation that could erase 16.8 billion in debt, retrieve the family tree torn apart by her grandfather's own hands, or make her dead mother open her eyes again.
Sakiko suddenly laughed.
"Yes, I believe you."
She whispered, taking the last crumpled thousand-yen note from her father's pocket and gently tucking it back into his shirt pocket.
"So, please continue to work hard to —"
"Rot here."
As she stood up, the hem of her skirt brushed against her father's twitching fingers, like flicking away a dead leaf.]
The world before her reappeared.
"But, this is all fake. Father wasn't decadent at all. Rikuo told me that Father was lying to me because he wanted me to return to the family. He didn't want me to suffer with him."
Little Sakiko smiled at Sakiko, the sunlight from outside the window seemed to divide the two into light and dark sides.
"Since he's always been lying to you, then, is the father you see in reality now truly real?"
Little Sakiko's words seemed to be etched into Sakiko's heart. Yes, a man who had never succeeded. A man who always said he would try hard, now saying, 'I was just deceiving you about how I was before,' can that really be believed?
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