Chapter 60: Ayumi Hoshino
The prison was located in the southwestern corner of Kisarazu City, about a twenty-minute drive from the city center. Its stark, greyish-white concrete walls loomed exceptionally cold and rigid under the weak winter sun. The massive iron gates remained tightly shut, flanked by two guards in crisp, stiff uniforms whose sharp gazes methodically swept over the occasional pedestrian.
The surrounding area was relatively desolate, dotted only with sporadic, scattered buildings that amplified a heavy sense of isolated confinement.
This sector had originally been part of an industrial zone before gradually transforming into a residential neighborhood. Though its geographical location was noticeably remote, the basic infrastructure was functional enough, featuring a few convenience stores scattered around to serve the sparse local population.
A half-day of constant traveling had left the trio feeling rather exhausted. From Ai's childhood apartment to the orphanage, and now to this prison, they had been tracing her developmental footsteps along the axis of time.
Even though they hadn't ultimately uncovered Ayumi Hoshino's whereabouts through this route, Hikaru felt the journey itself had been profoundly meaningful—at the very least, it had allowed them to gain a much deeper understanding of Ai's past.
"Should we pop inside and take a look?" Hikaru asked tentatively, eyeing the prison gates. "Who knows, maybe your mother is still on the inside."
"No way~" Ai waved her hand dismissively with a light, airy chuckle. "Back then, Mama was only locked up for petty theft. There's no way a minor charge like that would keep her in there for this long."
Hikaru arched an eyebrow. "Well, that's hard to say. What if she went and messed up again the second she got paroled? Some people just can't shake those old habits."
"Huh?" Ai blinked, clearly blindsided by that logical angle. "Does that actually happen?"
After mulling it over for a brief moment, she gave a helpless shrug. "Hmm... knowing Mama's personality, I guess that's actually a real possibility."
Ichigo shook his head beside them. "I highly doubt it. Prison isn't exactly a cozy resort; no one actively tries to keep living in an environment like that."
He paused for a beat before adding, "Besides, even if we wanted to visit an inmate, we'd have to book an appointment well in advance and provide official identification. The bureaucracy is an absolute nightmare. Let's just drop it."
Hikaru gave a nod, abandoning the thought. He also shared the consensus that Ai's mother wouldn't still be behind bars; his previous comment had merely been a bit of light teasing.
The trio continued to wander the vicinity, eventually transitioning from the prison gates to a relatively bustling little commercial street. The biting winter wind left Hikaru feeling completely parched, and spotting a convenience store on the corner, he proposed slipping inside to grab some drinks.
The interior of the store was as warm as spring, creating a violent contrast with the freezing air outside. Hikaru grabbed a bottle of mineral water and made a beeline for the counter to check out.
"Excuse me, how much is this?" he asked politely, lifting his head to look at the cashier.
The exact second his eyes locked onto her, Hikaru froze dead on the spot.
The woman standing behind the register looked to be somewhere in her early forties, with the harsh passage of time leaving heavy, deep marks across her features. But the absolute most arresting detail was her eyes—they were a deep, dark purple. Though they had long since lost their vibrant luster, the color remained strikingly unique. Her hair was the exact same shade of dark purple, though it was currently dry, frizzy, and completely devoid of shine, cascading haphazardly over both shoulders.
*Even if Ai grows old many decades from now, she will undoubtedly be infinitely more beautiful and radiant than the person standing here,* Hikaru realized.
*Don't tell me... this is actually Ai's mother?* Hikaru's hand completely jammed in mid-air.
Was this city simply microscopic... or was their luck just that absurd?
"Sir?" the woman asked, a trace of confusion in her voice. "Is something the matter?"
"No, nothing at all," Hikaru snapped out of his daze, scrambling to respond.
"You look strangely familiar... that blonde hair, where have I seen that before?" the woman muttered to herself. "Ah, sorry about that. Just set your item on the counter, please."
Hikaru complied, setting the mineral water down. But right at that exact moment, Ai systematically stepped forward, planting her body openly and confidently directly across from the woman.
"Long time no see," Ai said with a bright smile, the stars in her eyes gradually flaring to life.
The second that voice registered, the cashier looked as though she had been struck by a physical bolt of lightning. Her entire body locked up instantly, her hand freezing before she could even scan the product. Her eyes went wide, staring at the young girl in absolute, horrified disbelief.
"Ai..." she whispered, her voice trembling violently.
"Yep, it's me," Ai nodded, her composure shockingly serene. "I came back to find you because I have a few things I need to ask, Mama. Let's chat after you wrap up your shift."
Leaving those words behind, Ai smoothly turned around and walked away from the register, leaving an utterly shell-shocked Ayumi behind. Hikaru silently settled the bill, and alongside Ichigo, promptly followed in Ai's wake.
As they exited the storefront, he used his peripheral vision to quietly evaluate Ayumi Hoshino.
*Working as a cashier... at the very least, it qualifies as a legitimate, honest job.* Her customer service attitude seemed perfectly pleasant too. If one didn't possess prior knowledge of her background, absolutely no one would guess she harbored such a sordid, broken past.
The trio waited outside the convenience store for roughly half an hour.
"Are we seriously just going to stand around and dry-rot out here?" Ichigo asked, his patience wearing thin.
"We don't have a choice," Hikaru said, scanning their surroundings. "There isn't even a decent cafe in this neighborhood, let alone a place where we can sit down and rest our legs."
Ai maintained an absolute silence throughout the wait, her gaze fixed entirely on the glass doors of the convenience store, seemingly lost in a labyrinth of her own thoughts.
Finally, the relief shift employee arrived. Ayumi Hoshino shed her working uniform and slowly walked out of the store. She stopped right in front of Ai, her mouth opening and closing, yet she couldn't force a single syllable out.
Instead, it was Ai who proactively broke the ice. "People are constantly passing by here, so it's not a great spot to talk. Where are you living right now, Mama? Let's just head to your place."
Faced with her daughter's direct, no-nonsense approach, Ayumi looked visibly flustered, but she still managed a weak nod. "I... the place I'm renting is right nearby. Just follow me."
A few minutes later, they arrived outside a heavily weathered, run-down apartment building. Ayumi lived in a tiny room on the first floor that spanned barely over ten square meters, choked with a chaotic mess of miscellaneous belongings. The wallpaper had yellowed and peeled away, and the ceiling bore several prominent, ugly water stains. The air inside carried a stale cocktail of mold and heavy cigarette smoke, and the single window in the room was entirely blacked out by a pair of thick, heavy curtains.
The living conditions here made it a massive struggle to even find a place to sit down and hold a proper conversation. Ayumi frantically cleared off a tiny low table on the tatami mats, sitting down on her knees directly across from Ai. Hikaru and Ichigo could only locate a pair of plastic stools in the corner to minimize their space.
"Ai, I really... I never imagined you would actually come looking for me..." Ayumi's voice cracked, turning thick with unshed tears. "I thought I'd go to my grave without ever laying eyes on you again."
Ai tilted her head, a trace of genuine confusion coloring her tone. "Since you wanted to see me so badly, Mama, why didn't you ever proactively come find me? I'm a massively famous superstar now, you know. Tracking me down shouldn't have been hard at all, right?"
That pointed question forced a bitter, hollow smile onto Ayumi's face. "Well, when you put it that way... it's just that I felt I didn't possess the right to show my face to you."
"Then after you got out of prison, why didn't you come to the orphanage to bring me home?" Ai pressed further.
Ayumi instantly averted her eyes, refusing to meet her daughter's gaze.
"From the time I was little up until I grew up, I always felt like an abandoned child. Sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder... did Mama ever actually love me?" Ai's voice softened into an incredibly gentle register.
She paused for a beat, before answering her own question. "You probably didn't. After all, you were always so incredibly cold to me, and you never bothered to pick me up after your release. Even now, when I've become a massive star with plenty of money, you still didn't want to see me."
"That's not true!" Ayumi exploded suddenly, her entire upper body lunging forward as she screamed, "It wasn't like that!"
Hikaru and Ichigo swapped a brief look, collectively shrinking themselves further into the corner of the room, doing everything they could to hide their presence.
"I have always... always loved you," Ayumi's voice trembled with a desperate intensity.
Yet Ai merely stared at her in absolute silence, her lips sealed tight.
She had no way of knowing whether Ayumi was spinning a web of lies right now, but judging strictly by her past track record, her words carried absolutely zero weight.
The suffocating silence caused the atmosphere between the two to solidify into ice, piling an immense, crushing psychological pressure straight onto Ayumi Hoshino.
She had never been a stable, level-headed person to begin with; she was fundamentally a volatile, easily triggered thief who excelled at taking her personal frustrations out on others.
"You can't lay the entire blame on me, can you?!" Ayumi flared up with a sudden, bizarre surge of fury. A massive wave of victim-mentality erupted from the depths of her chest, forcing her to shriek, "Do you have any earthly idea how much pain I was in back then?! Kenichi and I were literally on the verge of getting married, and you went and ruined everything!"
"Me?" Ai's brow knitted tightly as she pointed a finger back at herself.
Ayumi let out a long, ragged sigh, looking as though she had aged another ten years in an instant.
She hadn't wanted to drag up the ghosts of the past, but now, driven by a desperate need to manufacture an excuse for her own failures, she felt compelled to lay every single ugly detail bare. "You were only eight or nine years old at the time, but you were already so beautiful it was terrifying. One day, I caught Kenichi looking at you... and his gaze had completely changed. It wasn't the way a person looks at a child anymore..."
"Of course I knew the fault lay entirely with him! And I found his thoughts absolutely nauseating, but..."
Ayumi dropped her head incredibly low, completely lacking the courage to look at her own daughter. "...I still couldn't stop myself from feeling an overwhelming amount of jealousy toward you."
Ai murmured softly, "So... that's how it was..."
Since the floodgates had already been forced open to this extent, Ayumi decided to unleash the absolute worst of it. "I envied you, so I constantly found myself doing horrific, malicious things to you."
"Did you honestly think it was a pure accident when shards of broken glass ended up mixed into your rice bowl when you were a kid?"
Ayumi let out a cold, mocking sneer as she unveiled the raw, unvarnished truth.
A deeply twisted, warped smile spread across her face. "I mixed those in on purpose."
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