Page 96 of Kotori
"But if I love you too, doesn't that mean I loved her less?" The vulnerable question reveals the guilt she's been carrying.
"Oh, sweetheart, no." I reach toward her carefully, not wanting to spook her. "Loving me doesn't mean you loved her less. It means she raised a daughter with such a big heart that there's room for everyone who deserves it."
"I miss her so much," Mizuki whispers, finally breaking completely. "And I'm scared that if I let you be my mama too, I'll forget how much she meant to me."
"You won't forget," I promise. "We'll make sure you never forget. We'll talk about her, remember her together, keep her love alive in this family."
For a moment, something wavers in her expression—hope, maybe, or the desperate need for maternal love she's been denying herself.
But then her walls slam back up, harder than before.
"I can't," she says, standing abruptly. "I won't betray her memory."
"Mizuki-chan," Kaito's voice carries quiet authority, the tone that makes grown men kneel. "Sit down."
She freezes, caught between emotional pain and ingrained obedience. For a moment, terror flickers across her face—defying her father is unthinkable.
But then her grief overwhelms her training.
"No," she whispers, the word hanging in the air like a blade. "I can't pretend this is okay."
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Kaito's face hardens, the mask of control slipping to reveal something dangerous underneath. "Your mother would want you to be loved," he says quietly, but there's steel beneath the words.
"You don't know what she'd want!" The words explode out of her before she can stop them. "She's dead because of this family, and now you want me to just accept a replacement like she never mattered!"
The silence that follows is deafening. Even Aya stops moving, sensing the shift in her father's energy.
"Get out," Kaito says quietly, his voice carrying the promise of consequences. "Before I forget you're grieving."
Mizuki realizes she's crossed a line that can't be uncrossed, but she's too deep in her breakdown to back down. "I'm sorry," she sobs, but still doesn't bow or kneel or show the submission he demands. "I just can't pretend everything is fine."
And then she runs, actually runs from the room like the eighteen-year-old she still is, leaving behind shocked silence and the echo of sliding doors.
Afterbreakfast,Ifindmyself in the family room with Aya and Kohana, Mizuki nowhere to be seen after her emotional exit. Aya works on her kanji practice while Kohana curls upnearby with a book, but the absence of their older sister creates a hollow feeling in the domestic scene.
"Paige-mama," Aya says, concentrating on her brush strokes but glancing toward the door, "is Mizuki-nee going to be okay?"
"She's hurting, sweetheart. Sometimes when people love someone very much and lose them, it takes time to learn how to love again without feeling guilty."
"But she'll come back, right?" Kohana asks quietly, worry clear in her voice. "She won't stay mad forever?"
"She'll come back," I promise, hoping I'm right. "She loves you both too much to stay away."
When Kaito appears in the doorway sometime later, drawn by the sound of quiet conversation, I catch the expression on his face as he watches us. Complete satisfaction. The vision he's had for his family finally coming to fruition, despite the complications.
"Making plans?" he asks, settling onto the floor beside us.
"Just talking about weekend adventures," I tell him. "Temples and bookstores and gardens."
"Sounds perfect." His hand finds mine, thumb tracing possessive patterns across my knuckles. "Watching you claim my daughters, seeing them choose you back, it's exactly what this family needed."
The contentment in his voice, the way he speaks of this as destiny rather than chance, reminds me that nothing in Kaito's world happens accidentally. Even this—the girls calling me mama, my fierce protective love for them—was part of his design.
He saw what I could become, what we could be together, and he made it possible.
His perfect captive, eager to give him everything he desires.
Including the love that makes our bond unbreakable.
