Murder Anniversary and the Reverse Memorial

by Mizuki Mizushiro

  “…………”

  Eiri chewed on her lip until the noisy trio had disappeared.

  The grounds of House Akabane were vast.

  Entry onto the private estate was prohibited to outsiders. This included not only the land on which the mansion was built but also several mountains that belonged entirely to the family.

  There was very little exchange with the people at the foot of the mountain, and only the family doctor, private tutors, and a few select others had been granted special permission to enter the mansion. Nobody outside of the criminal underworld knew the reality of House Akabane or had any reason to know about the family’s “other face.”

  Murder was the sole business of House Akabane. Consequently, “kill” or “don’t kill” was the only judgment that mattered in most situations. And the one single-handedly shouldering the burden of that decision was—

  “Mother is always gentle and kind, but…despite appearances, she’s really ruthless! She mercilessly slaughters anyone who would harm the Akabane, and if it will benefit the family, there’s nobody she won’t have killed.”

  —Fuyou Akabane. Eiri’s mother and the twenty-ninth head of the main family of House Akabane. Perhaps because of her overwhelming authority, Eiri’s voice as she described Fuyou was filled more with awe than affection.

  After visiting her father’s grave, Eiri had taken Kyousuke and the others on a tour of the spacious grounds. As they walked, she told them about the environment in which she was born and raised, and about her family.

  “I never have any idea what Mother is thinking. Neither her expression nor her demeanor ever changes in the least, so I can’t read her feelings… It’s really scary. It was even the same way when I failed. Even though I couldn’t kill, despite trying many times, she always said, ‘There, there’ or something with a carefree smile…but the sixth time I failed to kill someone, Mother didn’t do anything at all. Then, just when I thought I had been sent away, abandoned…this. I’m suddenly called back home, and everyone acts like nothing even happened… I really don’t understand it at all.”

  Eiri seemed very melancholy. She had been like this the whole time, after seeing Basara and finishing her grave visit. Of course, the house must have been a difficult place for Eiri to be. Too much time alone with her thoughts had put her in low spirits.

  Kyousuke caught up to Eiri, who had been walking ahead of them. “If you don’t understand her, why don’t you ask her directly? Surely she’d be willing to talk to you.”

  “…Well, that’s true.” Eiri made a bitter face, absently winding her hair around her index finger as she answered.

  “It’s just…I’m not especially good at talking to Mother. Ever since I was young, I’ve had to endure cruelty in the name of assassin ‘training.’ Whether sleeping or waking, it was train, train, train, train, working hard until I fainted and starting again when I came to. Being stranded alone deep in the mountains or showered by a rain of blades or attacked by wild animals or locked into complicated restraints…the curriculum at school is nothing compared to my education. I came close to dying more than once.”

  “…Seriously? That’s not education; that’s abuse.”

  “Yeah. Mother boasted that ‘your suffering now will prevent your death in the future,’ but I wonder… It wouldn’t have been as bad if she had acted strict like Kurumiya, but it was all the more frightening because she was always so peaceful.”

  “F-for sure…”

  It was a disturbing duality. It was no wonder that Eiri didn’t like talking to her. Kyousuke had thought that something seemed a little off about Fuyou, and now his suspicions were confirmed: She was a terrible mother.

  “—However, Father was different.”

  Eiri’s expression softened. “His eyes were sharp and aggressive, and he always looked displeased. He was usually taciturn and didn’t talk much, but his voice was loud when he yelled, and I trembled with fear whenever he scolded me. He was the exact opposite of Mother, a moody, unsparing person. But you know…”

  Her tone was gentle and had a quality to it that he had never heard before now, a sense of loneliness and longing. It was clear she held a deep affection for her father. “He was a really kind person. He was away a lot for work, but when I was crying or feeling depressed, he would silently stroke my head and stay with me. Keeping it a secret from Mother, he would let me go outside with him, too.”

  “…What a good father.”

  “Yeah. Apparently he originally had a job as a bodyguard, and since he was an outsider, he didn’t live by Akabane values… Whenever Father was around, those were the only times I felt any sort of peace. I can clearly remember the feeling of his big, rugged hands even now—”

  Eiri stopped walking and stared at her palm, sorrow welling up in her downcast eyes. “…I remember it.” Her voice was vanishingly quiet.

  “Eiri…?”

  Kyousuke turned to face her. Renko and Ayaka, who had been walking behind them, also caught up.

  “Hey, are you okay? If you want to cry, I’ll lend you my boobs.”

  “So Eiri had a father complex, huh…? Don’t worry about it.”

  “Sh-shut up!” Clapping her hands to her cheeks, Eiri rushed away from Renko and Ayaka. “It’s nothing! Nothing at all. I visited his grave for the first time in a while and just got a bit sentimental… It’s nothing to worry about.”

  She sighed as she pushed past Kyousuke. Her face looked angry and sour.

  “…I see. If you say so, that’s fine, but…”

  “Kksshh…so you don’t need my boobs? Aww, that’s too bad.”

  “Well if Eiri won’t, I will… Yay! Squishy, squishy, squishy!”

  “Hyah?! A-Ayaka…it’s hard to walk like this. Take your hands off—huuhh?!”

  “Tee-hee-hee. Your boobs are pretty sensitive for how big they are, huh? Hey, hey heyyy!”

  “What the heck are you girls doing together…?”

  The conversation about Eiri’s father was already half forgotten as Kyousuke and the others followed behind her. However, when they passed in front of a certain Japanese-style room—

  “…Hm?” Kyousuke stopped walking again. “Hey, shouldn’t we stop by here?”

  The room appeared to house a Buddhist family altar. The paper sliding doors had been left open, and the room was about eight mats wide. The faint scent of incense hung in the air. In front of the altar stood an offering shelf decorated with vegetables, fruits, Chinese lantern plants, and so on. It was an altar to greet the spirits of the Akabane ancestors.

  The offering shelf is an altar to greet the spirits of their ancestors, so Eiri’s father will also be there during Obon—or he should be, anyway. If so, shouldn’t Eiri be visiting this place instead of his grave?

  “…………”

  For a moment, Eiri’s gaze darted around as if she was searching for something to say. “—It’s fine. I already went,” she eventually answered, before casually continuing on her way.

  “Is that so…?”

  With a nod, Kyousuke followed after her. As he passed by the room, he looked at the offering shelf. A meal, the same as they had all eaten that morning, was laid out on vermilion plates. The untouched dishes had long since gone cold.

  Kyousuke’s gaze shifted from the offering of food back to Eiri’s receding figure. He sighed.

  I already went, Eiri had said.

  That’s probably a lie—

  After finishing their tour around the main building, Kyousuke and the others headed outside through the front door.

  A tall stone wall surrounded the unsurprisingly enormous manor grounds. In addition to the central mansion, the landscape was dotted here and there with smaller buildings like sheds and storehouses, as well as a number of separate tearooms and shrines.

  Among these facilities, the one surely put to the most use by the members of House Akabane was the martial arts dojo, which stood in a conspicuous location near the main house. In front of the dojo was a bas
in for ritual hand washing and an outhouse, all connected by a path of stepping stones set into red gravel.

  “Someone’s here…,” Eiri muttered as they emerged from the bamboo. “Kagura, maybe?” She paused, as if hesitant to intrude…

  “Hya-haaa! It’s water, water!”

  “Cold wateeer!”

  Running past their guide, Renko and Ayaka swarmed around the ritual hand bath. Snatching up the ladles, they began splashing each other with water.

  Eiri looked deflated as she watched her fellow students frolic in the hand bath. “…What the hell are you doing? What terrible manners.”

  Taking the ladle from Renko, she carefully scooped up some water and poured it over her left hand. Then, passing the ladle from one hand to the other, she doused her right hand. Passing the ladle back again, she collected water in her palm, gently rinsed her mouth, and spit it out. Finally, she replaced the ladle with both hands. Her actions were fluid and graceful. This was clearly a ritual she had repeated many times.

  “Do it like that, with one scoop of water,” she instructed, turning back to the other girls with a proud expression. “Got it?”

  “Slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp…”

  Renko had stuck her straw tube directly into the water basin and was intently sucking. Next to her, Ayaka was scooping the water up with two hands and drinking it.

  “……Listen—” Eiri tried to intervene.

  “Wahh, that’s cold! What are you doing, Eiri?”

  “Really! You people have no common sense, do you?!” Eiri, who had showered the two of them with the icy spring water, replaced the ladle. “…Hmph.” Leaving the purification station like that, she turned toward the dojo.

  Kyousuke carefully washed his hands, more or less copying what he had seen Eiri do, and then followed her to the front entrance. “Wow, even this building is really big…”

  The splendid tile-roofed building was, of course, entirely red. From behind the lattice door, they could hear the sounds of someone kicking off the floorboards and voices shouting “Hi-yah!” and “Take that!” and so on.

  “…Ryou and Ran? They’re energetic as always.” Eiri smiled as she opened the door and stepped into the dojo.

  When she did—

  “Oh, it’s you guys. Welcome.”

  A young man wearing scarlet hakama and a dark red haori smiled at them in a carefree manner. Kyousuke immediately stiffened.

  Eiri clicked her tongue. “…Tch. Are you still awake, big brother? You really ought to hurry up and get some sleep.”

  “Believe me, I’d like to.” Basara shrugged. “But these little ones wouldn’t let me sleep—”

  As Basara gestured at the twins, a white blade cut through the air just beside his tilted head. “My goodness. It’s hard being such a popular figure,” he boasted as he ducked and dodged the flashing weapons.

  “…Is that so?” Eiri said. “Well, how about sleeping now? I’ll send you to an eternal rest.”

  “Ah-ha-ha. To be honest, I keep dozing off. I’ve been awake all night, so I’m incredibly sleepy…though I might wake up if you dealt me some damage.” Covering his mouth with his right hand, Basara yawned, shifting slightly.

  A black blade cut through the air where Basara’s wrist had been just a moment before. Almost simultaneously, the white blade swung downward in a follow-up attack that harmlessly sliced through Basara’s afterimage.

  “U-ummm…”

  “Now, now, you two. Your swords are slow! Why, you couldn’t cut a butterfly like that!”

  “Shut up and die, big brother Basara!”

  “Die die die die die die diiie, big brother Basara!”

  “We’ve got you noooooooooooowwwwww!”

  “……What the heck is that?”

  Before Kyousuke’s bewildered eyes—right in the middle of the dojo floor, Basara stood looking bored while the twins Ryou and Ran furiously tried to cut him down. Black and white blades twirling in their hands, they came at him again and again, slicing in every direction without restraint or hesitation.

  Their twin swords each looked like the disassembled pieces of their scissors, and as they leaped at Basara, they spun the blades wildly by their round handles, dizzyingly switching between over-and underhanded grips.

  As twins, their coordination was uncanny. Sometimes together and sometimes separately, in sync or out, the brother-and-sister duo attacked again and again, skillfully catching their opponent unguarded—

  “Hey, maybe you’d like to stop standing around and give me a hand over here?”

  “…No thanks, big brother. I’ll try to contain myself.”

  “Eh? You’re so cold, little sister!”

  Basara continued to evade the twins’ attacks even as he and Eiri exchanged jabs.

  With minimal footwork and only the slightest movement, he leisurely avoided their tempestuous assault. Their dancing blades never once even grazed his skin.

  …It was an unbelievable sight.

  Renko and Ayaka, who were also peeking into the dojo, were frozen in awe. Eiri alone wore a calm expression as she watched her two young siblings slash at her older brother.

  “Hey, Eiri…what are they doing?”

  “What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious?”

  “It’s not obvious—that’s why I’m asking…”

  “They’re playing.”

  “……Eh?”

  “It’s pretty common in our house. Since all their toys are real swords, they’re just using those to play. Neither Ryou nor Ran is actually trying to kill him. And even if they did go all out, they wouldn’t be able to, you know? The difference in strength is too great.”

  “How insightful.” Basara grinned as he bent over, slipping through an opening in the twins’ consecutive attacks.

  “Kyah?!”

  “Whaaa?!”

  Holding his arms out, it looked like Basara was about to block Ran’s advance—but the next moment, the twins collided in midair. The two of them crashed into each other head-on. Falling painfully to the floor, they dropped their weapons and cried.

  “Waaaaaah, it hurts…it hurts, Ran!”

  “I’m the one in pain, Ryou…waaahhh!”

  “Ah-ha-ha! You two act exactly the same even when you’re hurt. Your problem is that you’re too closely synchronized; it makes you too easy to throw off balance.” Basara grinned boastfully. “Yet again, the fight was over before I even had to draw my sword, eh, Ryou? Ran?”

  “Oooooowwwwww!” the twins groaned together, glaring at their victorious sibling.

  Basara leisurely stretched and yawned. “Fwah…damn, I’m tired… I’m really sleepy. You hear that? Your big brother is sleepy! So I’m asking you, Eiri—would you please help drive away my sleepiness?”

  “I’ll pass. If you’re so tired, surely you should hurry up and get to bed.”

  “Well, that’s true I suppose, but even if I go to bed now, it would feel like I was leaving things halfway done. I’m seeing you for the first time in almost half a year. As your older brother, I definitely want to be allowed to evaluate your development.”

  “…No need. I haven’t developed very much anyway.”

  “Sorry. I’m not talking about your chest—”

  “I know that!” Eiri insisted angrily. Then, in a small voice: “…That part is growing just fine.”

  Without a moment’s delay, Renko jabbed back, “Doubtful.”

  “Huh?!” Eiri turned around, red faced. “It’s not a lie! They grew about a centimeter—”

  “And you’re dead.”

  “……?!”

  Eiri’s body suddenly shook, and she doubled over.

  When they looked at Basara, he had pulled a concealed hand out of the left sleeve of his kimono and stood sneering in a pose like he had just finished throwing something.

  His narrowed eyes stared at Eiri’s back—piercing her directly opposite her heart. “You were caught off guard just now, right? How careless of you! No true assassin would ever expose h
er back like that. I was able to kill you easily, despite your suspicions that it was a trap.”

  “……Ah.” Eiri put her arms around her own back and slowly turned to face her older brother.

  “Growing accustomed to a lenient environment, spending time with a lenient group, lacking proper guidance… Have you grown soft, Eiri? Not only have you failed to develop, you’ve actually gotten weaker. Don’t laugh, Rusty Nail. If you take away your skills, when you don’t have the courage to kill someone, what do you have left?”

  Eiri bit her lip, offering no answer to his relentless reprimands.

  …Nothing was stuck in her back.

  Basara had only gone through the action of throwing a concealed weapon; he hadn’t actually pulled it out and flung it. However, the lethal intent in his eyes and fingers was undeniably real.

  If Basara had actually hurled a weapon, Eiri would likely be dead, pierced through the heart from behind—his deadly intentions had pierced her as convincingly as any sword.

  “Good grief,” Basara sighed, lowering his arm. “I don’t know about your physical skills, but it looks like your mind has gone soft, hasn’t it, Eiri? I’m disappointed… Oh, too bad, too bad.”

  Stepping toward the entryway where Eiri and the others stood, he yawned, his expression softening. “Fwah…I’m way too sleepy. I think I’ll go nap until this afternoon…” Still yawning and stretching, Basara passed Eiri, and after putting on his geta sandals, he hurried off.

  “”

  Eiri stood unresponsive.

  “U-ummm…sorry about that. It’s just, your boobs are, um… Well, I wonder if they aren’t developing a bit after all. About a centimeter for sure, yeah.”

  “She’s right! And not just one centimeter… I bet they’ve grown two, maybe even three!! Don’t worry about what that dirtbag had to say!”

  Renko clapped Eiri on the shoulder, and Ayaka frantically offered reassurance.

  Their voices did not seem to reach her. Eyes downcast, Eiri did not move.