Chapter 61: Regret Always Comes Too Late
"I mixed those in on purpose," Ayumi Hoshino said, her voice dropping until it was as light as a feather.
This woman had literally just claimed she loved her daughter, yet now she was maliciously throwing her past cruelty right in Ai's face. It was impossible to tell what was actually going through her head.
Ayumi continued, "I knew white rice was your absolute favorite, so I deliberately mixed glass shards into it just to be spiteful. Pretty messed up, isn't it?"
After letting those words slip out, she felt a bizarre wave of relief, which was instantly replaced by a surge of panic.
Ai clutched her hand over her mouth, completely speechless.
At this point, Hikaru felt he absolutely had to step in.
While the general rule of thumb was to stay out of other people's family drama, this woman's actions had blown past his absolute limit of tolerance.
*She doesn't even deserve to be called a parent.* The thought burned violently through his mind, nearly consuming his remaining logic.
Ayumi Hoshino had a documented history of domestic abuse, and that was the exact point he found completely unforgivable. Apologizing now was a day late and a dollar short, because she had effectively ruined Ai's childhood. Those early years carry immense weight in a person's life, and Ai was still deeply affected by that traumatic period. In other words, the scars Ayumi had inflicted on Ai were practically impossible to fully heal.
Facing someone who had actively abused Ai like this, Hikaru felt the only reason he hadn't physically laid a hand on her was out of sheer respect for her status as Ai's biological mother.
He backed Ai unconditionally, and he didn't exactly claim to possess some high-and-mighty moral compass. If Ayumi Hoshino ever dared to mistreat Ai the way she used to, he would absolutely deliver a real-world beatdown.
"Jealous of your own child's beauty, jealous of your own child's talent—" Hikaru's voice was ice-cold. "Does someone like you even have the right to be a parent? You don't get to say you love her."
"Everything you did was nothing more than twisted self-gratification. All I see is a thoroughly self-centered person who never gave her child a shred of genuine affection. If the barrier to entry for becoming a parent wasn't so laughably low, you never should have had the chance to raise a kid in the first place."
Those words sliced straight through Ayumi Hoshino's remaining emotional defenses like a blade.
"Fine! I admit I messed up big time back then, but I still love my kid!" she shot back, her entire body trembling with intense emotion. "Is there something wrong with that?! Ai was literally stealing my own boyfriend's attention away from me—how could I not feel jealous?!"
"Real parents never feel jealous of their own children," Hikaru countered, refusing to give an inch. "Whether it's incredible talent or stunning looks, if a child is blessed with those gifts, a normal parent feels nothing but immense pride and joy. That's how a real guardian reacts. In this 'love' you keep talking about, your immediate instinct wasn't to look out for your kid; you only looked at things from your own selfish perspective. At the end of the day, you just completely lacked a sense of responsibility."
"What's wrong with looking at things from my own perspective?! I'm a normal human being too!"
"If you were living completely on your own, sure, there'd be nothing wrong with that. But you clearly weren't prepared to be a mother," Hikaru's words grew increasingly sharp. "Since you weren't ready, why did you bring her into this world? It would have been infinitely better if you had never given birth to her at all. But you had her, envied her, and then abused her—"
"No matter how many excuses you manufacture, you are a textbook definition of an unqualified mother."
Ayumi Hoshino felt her mind teetering on the edge of a total breakdown. "Who the hell are you anyway?! Why are you sticking your nose into someone else's family business?!"
"Oh, so now you're trying to pivot the topic?" Hikaru let out a cold laugh. "I'm Ai's friend, so obviously I can't stand by and watch her get treated like this. Most importantly, you actually did those horrific things to her, yet you have the nerve to sit there and say you love her. It's thoroughly nauseating."
Ayumi briefly considered getting physical, but she instantly realized she stood zero chance against the young man standing before her. Left with no other option, she shrieked, "What are you people even here for?! Did you come all this way just to drag up my past sins?!"
As her voice trailed off, a heavy silence fell over the room once more. Ai quietly glanced over at Hikaru, feeling a messy cocktail of deep gratitude and emotional exhaustion.
She was incredibly glad Hikaru was standing up for her, and she completely agreed with his logic, but the fact that the person he was tearing into was her own mother left her feeling a touch of shame.
"Well, not exactly," Ichigo coughed, finally emerging from his corner.
Having just witnessed a massive domestic drama, he did his best to suppress the smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. "The truth is, we actually came here to ask you a few questions." Ichigo systematically laid out the details of the recent tabloid situation to Ayumi Hoshino, asking if she had any suspects in mind.
"Someone who knows about what happened back then and wants to leak it to the media..." Ayumi pondered for a moment. "It has to be him. Kenichi Sato, my boyfriend from back then."
"He was already a massive piece of trash for harboring those kinds of sick thoughts toward an eight or nine-year-old child, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if he pulled a stunt like this."
"He's actually still living somewhere in this city. I keep tabs on him to some extent. He's living an absolute trainwreck of a life, with debt collectors constantly pounding on his door. That's probably why he's resorting to these dirty tactics to score some quick cash."
Ayumi had initially tracked her ex-boyfriend's movements, though she had basically cut off all contact after he got married, leaving her with only a vague idea of the neighborhood he resided in.
"Could you give us his current address?"
Ayumi let out a weary sigh. "I only know the general district he's in. I don't know the exact building."
"That's fine, we'll figure out a way to track him down ourselves."
With the necessary intel locked down, Hikaru signaled to Ichigo and Ai that it was time to head out. But just as Ai reached the threshold of the door, her mother's trembling hand reached out, catching her by the arm.
"Can I please just have a few words with Ai alone?" Ayumi's voice carried a pathetic, almost begging humility.
Ai instinctively looked toward Hikaru.
Hikaru gave it a brief thought. "We'll head downstairs and wait for you. But just so you know, Ai, if you take too long, I'm coming back up to get you."
As the heavy footsteps of the two men gradually faded down the hall, the room was left to just the mother and daughter. Ayumi closed the door, gripped Ai's hands tightly, and delivered a deep, low bow.
"That man was completely right. I lacked any sense of responsibility, and I don't deserve to be called a mother." Ayumi's voice shook violently; it was the first time Ai had ever heard her mother sound so incredibly fragile.
Ayumi Hoshino was a terrible person, and she was well aware of that fact. She had given birth to Ai with some random guy she couldn't even name, crowding into the absolute bottom rungs of society just to survive like a street dog. Then, the second she landed a new boyfriend, she turned around and let jealousy warp her mind, transforming her own flesh and blood into a victim of domestic violence.
"What kind of mother actively envies her own daughter?"
She was practically sobbing now, letting out every single ounce of emotion she had suppressed over the years. "But I did feel regret! Getting jealous of you back then is the single greatest regret of my entire life."
Ayumi genuinely felt remorse, because during the long, isolated years she spent alone, images of her time with Ai would constantly flash through her mind. She felt profoundly lonely, and she had started to crave the warmth of a real family. In reality, she didn't even know if she truly loved her daughter; perhaps this sudden outpouring of emotion was merely her own guilt driving her to seek an easy out. Ayumi desperately craved Ai's forgiveness, wanting a clean slate so she could comfortably distance herself from the monster she used to be.
She was incredibly pathetic, but Ai didn't really care about any of that.
Even so, Ai had still wanted to hear this apology fall from her mother's lips.
"It's been so long that I've actually forgotten most of the things that happened when I was little," Ai said, offering a gentle smile.
Her voice was incredibly soft. "My childhood definitely wasn't great, but I have a completely normal, wonderful life now... So, I still want to thank you, Mama. The things Hikaru-kun said earlier were definitely a bit harsh, but at the very least, I'm still grateful to you for bringing me into this world, giving me the chance to experience the true warmth of a family."
"Yeah, I forgive you," Ai said easily, treating the entire heavy history like a minor, insignificant detail.
After letting those words slip out, she didn't feel any profound shift inside, she merely felt as though another layer of baggage had been lifted from her shoulders. Ai had fully assumed that seeing her mother again would make her furious, that she would scream and demand to know why she had been abandoned.
But actually facing her room-to-room, she realized the middle-aged woman standing before her was just so utterly...
Foreign.
This mother had been absent from Ai's life for far too long, and she had faded from Ai's heart just as thoroughly. There simply wasn't a slot left open for her anymore.
Ai granted her mother forgiveness with absolute serenity, burying this chunk of her past without a second thought. It was no big deal, she reasoned. She was genuinely happy with her life right now, so she could naturally look past the miseries of her childhood—a unique brand of grace that belonged strictly to those who had successfully made it to the top.
"That man... is he your current boyfriend?" Ayumi blurted out suddenly.
"Huh? Hikaru-kun...?" A faint pink blush crept onto Ai's cheeks. "Our relationship is a bit complicated, but we aren't officially a couple right now."
"I can tell he genuinely, deeply cares about you," Ayumi said earnestly. "The way he looks at you is lightyears away from the way my old boyfriend used to look at you."
"And Ai, you look incredibly happy when you're by his side. The look in your eyes when you watch him definitely isn't the way a person looks at a regular friend; you view him as someone you can completely lean on. You like him, and he clearly has feelings for you, yet you aren't together—that is a massive shame."
"Huh? Mama, why are you suddenly bringing this up?"
Ayumi merely continued talking, lost in her own thoughts. "I ended up losing the most precious thing in my life because I was driven by fear. I just hope you don't let fear hold you back, only to end up exactly like me."
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